
Class _^4£^£^, 
Bnok Fff 



GopyrigM]^?. 



CDPHRIGHT DEPOSm 



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POT-POURRI 
PARISIEN 



7 



^ BY 

E. BRYHAM PARSONS 



NEW YORK: 
BROADWAY PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
_ _. 19 J2 



o^ 



T^ 



'b 



DEDICATED 

TO j 

MONSIEUR LUC-OLIVIER MERSON, j 



■5 



Copyright, 1912, \ 



BY 

E. Bryham Parsons, 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 



* With regard to the title of this book, it is interesting to note 
that the word "Pot-Pourri" is often used in French as applied to 
a song which is composed of several different airs, one succeeding 
the other in a single song — a sort of mixture of symphonies. 

€C!.A327437 



PREFACE 



I have sought in writing and subsequently arranging this 
book to place things in the order in which they come and to 
leave practically untouched the impressions of each period 
of my life in Paris. I have carefully avoided the dangerous 
practice of inserting afterthoughts in the midst of past im- 
pressions. Only by adherence to this rule can one trace 
the gradual changes that take place in the ideas of a 
stranger who is living permanently in a foreign country. 
His first impressions are almost all negatived by later ex- 
perience. 

To-day I regard the French as a race whose star is in the 
descendant. To-morrow my impressions may change, for 
I fasten myself to no dogma. The French may recover a 
purer religious instinct than that which led them before, and 
upon the ruins of which they now hastily trample. Their 
administrative departments may emerge from the corrup- 
tion of jobbery; the decoration of the Legion of Honour 
may once again be placed beyond the bid of wealthy pur- 
chasers and become the reward of valour instead of cun- 
ning. 

The intrinsic qualities of the French race abide — cour- 
tesy, honesty, and purity now and again emerge from the 
surface of the flood of atheism, and without doubt there 
are units of the French army who, devoid of treachery and 
unblinded by conceit, are still worthy to stand under those 
tattered and glorious Napoleonic banners which formerly 
floated over three<(uarters of European territory. 

Ernest B. Parsons. 
February 14, 1910. 



INDEX 

PAGE 

How I Came to Paris i 

Second Visit to Paris 17 

Chez Merson 24 

L'Ecole des Beaux- Arts . . 25 

How to Enter the Ecole des Beaux-Arts . . . . . . 29 

The Bal de Quat'z Arts 36 

The Patron's Banquet . . 43 

The Fete in the Grand Palais 40 

Monsieur Jean Veber's Bag.. .. .. 48 

Our Monasterial Hotel 58 

Our Monasterial Hotel Changes its Name . . . . . . 68 

The Light that Failed . .. .. 78 

A propos of Duelling 

The "Herald" Office 

The Coming of Oppler 

The Bishop 

Amexco. . .. .. 

The Garden of Eden . . 

Africa in Paris 

vii 



.. 90 

.. 94 

. . 106 

.. 112 

.. 117 

.. 126 

.. 130 



POT-POURRI PARISILN 



CHAPTER I. 



HOW I CAME TO PARIS. 



The Man in the Newspaper Shop which I frequented in 
Bloomsbury told me before ever I started that people who 
went to Paris rarely came back. They were not all mur- 
dered, said he, but a good many were. They got run over, 
and killed in the Underground Railways, and assassinated 
in broad daylight. Strangely enough, the man who spoke 
thus slightingly of Paris is himself a foreigner. He would 
not, he said, go to Paris on any account. I argued with 
him about that and protested that very many wealthy 
Americans and Englishmen went to Paris for a week's 
amusement, and came back alive. But his gloomy views 
were in no wise disturbed, and I left him full of dark fore- 
bodings for my future. 

The landlady, on the contrary, cherished cheerful recol- 
lections of her ten days' stay in the Gay City. She was 
especially amused at having been asked by her French 
friends, who had brought her over for the holiday, to run 
out and get some milk at the adjoining milk-shop, being in- 
structed to ask for some "Doolay." "What a name!" she 
expostulated laughingly, when telling me her experiences. 
Her pronunciation of "du lait" was certainly calculated to 
astonish the natives. 

It was my intention, many days ago, in the halcyon 
times when they dismissed me from the office doors with 
three weeks' money and a clear conscience to boot — it was 
my distinct intention to take a holiday. 

But take warning, oh stay-at-home Britisher, who has 
never learnt the art of holiday-making, and who says to 
himself: "Well, I don't know where to go, and I certainly 
don't want to spend money that's necessary for a holiday. 
I have so many claims upon me at home ; I can't afford to 

try..^^ . f 



go abroad, and Paris is the only city I really want to visit." 
Cease these arguments, sir, or you will do as I did — stay at 
home for the best part of your holiday, pay no just debts, 
yet spend as much money as would have carried you to 
Venice and back. And mark this — ^the true holiday pays 
for itself. The incidental experiences, cropping up on 
every side of the railroad and hovering even over the awful 
tempestuous sea, which fills the cabin of our steamboat with 
groaning victims — these same incidental experiences are 
thrown in gratis, and help to make up a holiday. 

I do wish they would hurry up and make the Channel 
Tunnel. Surely this stupendous feat of engineering, if it 
were immediately put in hand, would effectually cement 
the "entente cordiale"? As I lay in the stern of the good 
ship that ploughed her way over the uneasy and dismal 
Channel to-day, I seemed so entirely ignored by the ship's 
crew that I hailed a certain good-looking sort of skipper 
who sauntered by, crying out to him in my agony: — 

"I suppose there is nothing I can do to stop this?" 

"Nothing," he replied. "And," he added cheerfully, as 
he turned on his heel about his duties, "the man who finds 
a remedy for that will make a fortune." 

The words sank into my mind. I remembered and shall 
remember the dismal sights that that skipper sees every 
other day — the great saloon, pitching and tossing as the 
ship pitches and tosses; every couch occupied by a recum- 
bent figure, deadly pale, with a basin resting by his side. 
Pale, delicate ladies put to the torture ; strong men made to 
look fools — there they lie, a prey to the whims of the ocean 
— at the mercy of the winds and the waves. 

A fortune awaits the man who can obviate this daily 
misery. And that man will surely be the engineer of the 
Channel Tunnel. 

In what other department of life would a company dare 
to subject its patrons to such anguish and indignity? Many 
of us have no great desire to see the sea in the glory of its 
roughness. We would much rather rattle cheerfully along 
under the ocean bed, keeping nice and dry and tidy. 

I thought I was doing the best thing for myself in stand- 
ing down on deck at the stern of the boat, taking off my 
hat so as to have plenty of fresh air round my head and 
trying to take an interest in the rapidly receding coast line 
of Folkestone. But I presently found myself clutching the 
gunwale, leaning over, completely vanquished. The great- 
est philosophy was of no avail whatever. One by one the 
outposts of one's determination not to be ill under any cir- 
cumstances were overcome. And by the time we had 



reached Boulogne I was thoroughly done up. The other 
passengers seemed astonished to see someone enduring 
these penalties and agonies out in the open, instead of re- 
signing himself to a couch in the cabin. 

One lady, who looked quite a stoic when she started out, 
watched me from the saloon window, and I afterwards rea- 
lized that the expression of amusement that her face wore 
during the first half-hour of the crossing was occasioned by 
her complete realization of the fact that I should sooner or 
later give in. I was doubly astonished to find, on looking 
up at her window later on, that she herself was being at- 
tended to by a smiling steward. But that is all over now. 

Boulogne Harbour at last! I wish I had a painting of 
the man with keen grey eyes and sharp-pointed beard who 
seized my bag as we descended from the boat and demand- 
ed half a franc for carrying it through the Customs. He 
was an amusing character. After paying our English por- 
ters at Charing Cross twopence for no heavier service, it 
seemed rough to be pounced on at Boulogne — while I was 
yet hardly recovered from mal de mer — by a wiry, loose- 
bloused, plausible, and picturesque French commissionaire, 
with a villainous stoop, and told to pay fivepence or to 
suffer the contumely of a foreign despot. I objected, and 
he promptly brought out of his pocket and showed me a 
small printed card, setting out his legal charges as a com- 
missionaire — "One bag, Fr.0.50,'' etc., etc. I merely said: 
'Teut etre vous avez ecrit cela!" But he did not seem 
over-anxious to assume authorship of the little printed 
card. He protested that it was genuine, inspired — a sort of 
Government document, *'une chose terrible." 

I am doing Paris three days on twenty francs, so have to 
study economy. 

"En voiture \" We clamber up and take our seats. The 
third-class carriages are extremely uncomfortable, but no 
matter. We are at last actually bound for the French capi- 
tal. In the fields that lie between Boulogne and Paris I 
Watched, as our train sped by, some of the real, fine, old 
peasant class, with blue smocks and clear-cut, clean-shaven, 
sometimes wisely wrinkled faces, standing at the doors of 
their cottages or working in the fields. They were the first 
distinct and actual reminder that England had passed away 
swallowed up in the sea-storms, and that we were on the 
Continent. 

Thus it was, diverted by a hundred odd incidents, I found 
my way to Paris, arriving just before dark. 

The Gare du Nord was positively packed with people. I 
had no French money in my pocket, but on approaching a 

^ - ... ' 3 ' - .. - 



group of railway officials, a man in plain clothes detached 
himself from them and began to speak English to me. He 
led me, at my request, to a shop outside, where he gave me, 
as I afterwards ascertained, the exactly correct change for 
a sovereign in francs and sous and saw me into a taximetre 
or regulation cab, telling me to pay the cocher not more 
than two francs for the drive down to Rue Jacob, across 
the Seine, in the Latin Quarter. This obliging individual 
seemed quite contented with the small amount I gave him, 
telling me that I should always find him on the platform of 
the station when I required him. 

I greatly enjoyed the drive through the busy, brightly-lit 
streets of the capital. I once went to Venice in London, and 
spent half an hour in its market-place and on the bridges, 
listening to the Venetian boatmen swearing at each other, 
and Paris reminds me of that. But there is more to it. An 
eternal cracking of whips. I have never heard London 
drivers crack their whips in this way- — with so much gusto 
— sharp reports like pistol-shots. My white-hatted driver 
seemed to be setting a fine loud example to the rest. This 
is a sort of French "aside" — they must have a music of 
some sort to accompany them wherever they go. 

Then, hundreds of thousands of foreign faces, all worth 
studying — the real foreign type — not the sort you meet in 
Bloomsbury, London. 

We crossed the Pont des Saints-Peres, and on arrival at 
the hotel in the Rue Jacob I found that establishment a 
most homely and interesting one, with a large courtyard on 
the inner side of the white entrance gates. Here, in the 
courtyard, a long dinner table was set, and a party of Eng- 
lish excursionists, many of them travelling under the aus- 
pices of Cook's or the Polytechnic, sat enjoying their good 
food and gratis red wine. I soon joined them and did my 
best with the red wine, which tasted all the better in that it 
was included in the humble six francs which I paid per 
day at that hotel. I much prefer this wine to English 
beer. It gives one an appetite and makes one feel no worse 
but a great deal better, even taken in large quantities. 

Two American ladies, with a little girl— a charming, 
grave-eyed child, with regular features, very French-look- 
ing, I thought — formed part of our party at meal times. 

The great courtyard of the hotel was always a delight to 
me. Here one might sit on a bench after dinner, secure in 
a quiet harbourage, yet within easy reach of the sounds 
and the sights of the busy streets — smoking strong cigar- 
ettes of the kind one buys in Oxford-blue packets all over 
Paris. Above one gleamed the lights of the many rooms of 



the hotel — lights which shone far up overhead from win- 
dows invariably open night and day and the frames of 
which were encircled with flowering creepers. The man- 
ager, a very pleasant and engaging young Frenchman, as- 
sisted by two male waiters who did the work ordinarily 
undertaken by housemaids in England, as well as the duties 
belonging customarily to waiters, helped to make us com- 
fortable by leaving us to do as we pleased. Our break- 
fast, served either in the open courtyard of the hotel or in 
the salle-a-manger within, was ready at any time we liked, 
and greatly resembled the English morning meal. It was 
always delightful to rise early in the morning and saunter 
out down the Rue de I'Universite, or up towards the Boule- 
vard Saint-Germain, and watch the hurrying throng of 
French people on their way to work, stepping along so 
gaily and as sprightly as though they were starting out on 
a pleasure excursion — so many bright interchanges of pleas- 
ant courtesy, pretty girls on their way to the shops, and 
women going to or returning from the markets. Then one 
strolled into breakfast and afterwards started the round 
of sight-seeing. 

But these early morning streets — how bright and fresh 
they were. It seemed as though the dawn — pressing close- 
ly upon the sound of the last midnight footsteps and 
smothered sighs and laughter of students wending their 
way through the Latin Quarter with or without female 
companions — had descended with joy and eagerness upon 
these well-washed streets and white stone buildings, which 
have never known the degradation of a winter's fog such 
as our streets suffer here in London — this sooty experience 
having been spared them in the Gay City. 

The Rue de Rome contains an especially pleasant recol- 
lection for me. Here I walked and talked with a Parisienne 
who was one of the prettiest and wittiest women I had ever 
met. She was married, and ours was a harmless flirtation 
which ended as happily as it began. Her society seemed 
to me the essence of the best of Paris. This great Rue de 
Rome, stretching away seemingly for ever, I first saw in 
the gloaming, and it conveyed, even apart from its name, a 
vague and hazy impression of eternity. Running on ap- 
parently for ever in a straight line, one imagined oneself 
escaping at last by means of it into the fertile plans of Italy. 
Coupled as it was in my mind with the vision of sweetness 
and light whom I have just referred to, its attractions were 
irresistible, and thither I wended my way whenever I tired 
of the main centre of this fascinating city. Yet, alas ! how 
rapidly one's impressions fade away. "L'Etoile" (as I 



called her, for her eyes were like stars) becomes a name — 
a dazzling souvenir only, growing more dim every day. 
Set in a blaze of new sensations, the centre of a four days' 
wonder — the diamond on the crest of a crown of new ex- 
perience — I'Etoile fades away out of my recollections. 

The French are a gay, jaunty race. They trust to each 
other's good sense in the open streets and are seldom run 
over — in spite of the ponderous steam tramcars which 
forge ahead at every moment, crashing on their way down 
brilliantly-lit boulevards. These trams, with their formid- 
able and ponderous length of carriages, are somewhat out 
of place amidst the grandeur of a city which might have 
been planned and built by the gods. 

A certain code of formality seems to form the basis of 
the French character. It is not, however, a formality such 
as we meet with over here — standoffish, red-tape-like in its 
origin — ^but a genuine and hearty formality, which puts 
backbone into the slightest actions of life and scorns to 
show the white feather or to make a gloomy answer how- 
ever circumstances may press. Indeed, one is forced to 
the conclusion that circumstances never do press much in 
France. One cannot squeeze blood out of a stone; nor 
can one discover a single specimen, apparently, of a gen- 
uinely humiliated, sulky, or gloomy Frenchman or woman. 
As you pass them in the streets, as you meet them in the 
cafes, they radiate with a sort of Continental sunshine, as 
though each one of them possess a sense enabling them to 
place the highest possible value on life. They walk along 
like people who are every day being forgiven afresh by 
their Creator and who are rejoicing continually, so that 
Fate is shamed into pleasing them — just as one cannot find 
it in one's heart to deny a smiling child its simple requests. 

The French, by the way, have no word equivalent to our 
"shocking." They only imitate the English word, in fun, 
putting the accent on the second syllable — ^''shock-m^r'' — or 
rather, they make two distinct words of the two syllables. 
This significant absence of a word which is so useful over 
here to denote our horror, our prudery, our holding up of 
hands in dismay, gives the key to another phase of French 
character. Stripping life of unnecessary "shocks," whether 
prudish, moral, or otherwise, they in no way relax their 
strict codes of morality — that is, the better class of citizens ; 
and woe-betide the stranger who, taking advantage of their 
seeming ignorance of the word "shocking" shall encroach 
beyond the bounds of good taste. Blithe, jaunty, intrepid, 
and dainty, their women-folk pass on their way, knowing 
the world well enough not to fear it. 

... -6 



It is this "bon cameraderie" between men and women 
which makes the thoroughfares safe and pleasant, and the 
cafes as interesting as a garden-party. I speak always of 
the true French citizens — those who work, who read, who 
live in the best and fullest sense of the word — the city 
rings with their mirth. The restraints of town life in Eng- 
land are almost unknown to them. Whether their motto: 
''Liberte, Equalite, Fraternite" is justified in the French 
nation as a whole or not, it certainly seems to be a reflex 
of their character as individual citizens. Life to them is 
as a great fair, full of joy and amusement. 

Renowned sculptors have flung before them in profusion, 
in prodigal quantities, in their lovely gardens and their 
magnificent and stately squares the poetry of beauty. At 
every turn of the Tuileries the glance is arrested by some 
fresh evidence of the art of perhaps the most artistic na- 
tion in the world. These faces of stone which gleam at 
you with such surpassing beauty, these figures which lean 
out towards you from their bowers of flowers in all atti- 
tudes of bewitching, grave, and voluptuous abandon; 
stretching out delicate hands as though to entreat you to 
observe the beauty of their workmanship — the amazing 
quantity and quality of these sculptured works induces one 
to believe that they have been showered upon the French 
nation by sculptors who loved their work so much that they 
carved them gratuitously and contributed them as their 
offering towards the general grace and gaiety of the nation. 

The public buildings, the bridges, the fountains, are all 
one mass of glorious carving. 

I travelled once or twice on the Metropolitan railway — 
not without a sense of impending danger. American engi- 
neers state that no non-inflammable material has yet been 
introduced on the French Metro.* This light-hearted, gay, 
careless nation seems, however, to have forgotten all about 
the holocaust on their underground. The tooting of their 
— well, they sound like tin trumpets ! — makes the journey a 
merry one. The whistle of the engine-driver is always an- 
swered as the train starts from each station, by this tin- 
trumpeting sound from the other end of the train as a sig- 
nal that all is well. The cry is heard, *'En voiture!" and 
the noisy train crashed on into the next tunnel. Even in 
work they are like children at play. It was travelling thus 
that I arrived one night at the "Moulin Rouge" and was 
somewhat amused to find an actual mill-wheel revolving 
in the dark, amply illuminated with little red lamps which 

* 1905. 
.1 . T ^ ! . \ 



went round and round on the arms of the wheel, the turret 
of the mill being equally well reproduced. Of course I 
had heard times and again of the "Moulin Rouge," but 
nobody had thought it worth while to tell me that there 
was an actual Red Mill there, and it leapt upon me with a 
delightful sense of actuality as I climbed the steps of the 
Underground and came up opposite the illuminated thea- 
tre, that there was more in the name than I had at first 
supposed. People always take it for granted that one 
knows everything and therefore they tell you nothing. 

My heart was full of joy of seeing all these new things 
for the first time. 

I managed to get out to Versailles, from the Gare de 
Montpamasse, travelling on the top of the railway carriage 
by way of an experience. These elevated seats, though 
somewhat dusty and uncomfortable, afford one an excel- 
lent view of the surrounding country, and as soon as we 
got some way beyond the fortifications, it became interest- 
ing to note the succession of charmingly-built country 
houses, hidden away behind the trees, in picturesque and 
secluded-looking gardens. I noticed here some fine old 
stone walls, thickly covered with fruit, each individual 
plum, peach, or pear being carefully wrapped up to pre- 
serve it from birds or bees. 

On arriving at Versailles, I walked through miles of 
picture galleries in the Palace, and saw the great Chamber 
where the deputies used to sit to elect a new President once 
in seven years. I strolled for hours in the gardens, where 
the autumn leaves are now lying thickly. The mighty 
fountains were not playing, but the long stretches of orna- 
mental waters, running in the aggregate for miles, between 
shady avenues of trees, were most imposing on that fine 
summer's day. The woods were wet with recent showers ; 
but now the sun was shining, and the air was just pleasantly 
cool. Here Marie Antoinette must have wandered many 
a time. And here Napoleon walked alone, with folded 
arms, pondering his next campaign, or gathered his mighty 
marshals around him, and traced on the map the line of 
his next march. I saw in the Palace, shut away from the 
great bare magnificent gilded galleries, filled with the pic- 
tures of Napoleon's triumphs, the cosy and snug suite of 
rooms belonging solely to Marie Antoinette — an agreeable 
sanctuary, into which she might escape from the glitter and 
confusion of Court life. 

I had lunch in a small "Bouillon" in the village. Every- 
thing was full of interest. The great dog, who belonged to 
the master of that establishment, seemed to be French, in 

8 



his way. For when in a new country the traveller looks 
out for everything that is new, and his expectations are 
constantly being realized, partly because he wishes to be 
convinced that he is enjoying himself. I was particularly 
struck, on landing at Boulogne, for instance, with the 
thought that these horses standing there in the station were 
French horses, and must have quite different ideas and 
antecedents to the English horse — an excusable conceit, no 
doubt, and one that lent enchantment to the view. 

A long and tiring morning in the Louvre persuaded me 
that I much preferred the Galleries of the Musee de 
Luxembourg. The Louvre is too vast, too enormous, too 
dazzling. These acres of pictures and sculpture tire by 
reason of their quantity, however much one may be in- 
clined to be enraptured with their quality. Looking at ^'Le 
Deluge," by Trionon, a picture of a young man clinging 
to a tree, his old father being seen clinging to his back, 
while with his one free hand the young man grasps the hand 
of his wife, from whose neck and hair is hanging her 
younger son, while in her arms she grasps a baby, all of 
them tottering over an abyss of ever-mounting waters — 
this vast picture, placed high on the walls, almost affects 
one with nausea. As, with craning neck, I gazed closer at 
it I noticed that the tree to which the whole cavalcade of 
human beings were hanging was broken, and might give 
way at any moment, when its human freight would be 
precipitated into the dark and gloomy waters of the rising 
tide. Staring ever upwards, in a species of fascination at 
the appalling catastrophe which was impending, a great 
giddiness overcame me, and I swang round, falling into 
the arms of a convenient gendarme, who, thinking I was 
intoxicated, conveyed me gently and firmly from the 
Louvre. I hope I am not exaggerating. 

Once outside I stepped down quickly to the river Seine 
and took a steamboat to Saint Cloud. The sun shone out. 
The waters sparkled with a thousand diamond stars, which 
danced and glittered before us as we flew up the river, till 
the eyes were dazzled with the abundance and magnifi- 
cence of these gems of sunshine. Past the Eiffel Tower, 
under a bridge from which leant down glorious stone ap- 
paritions, figures whose attitudes suggested that they were 
anxious to speed us on our way; past countless fishermen, 
mostly of the working class, who, this gay Sunday after- 
noon, sat smoking on the banks, each with a long rod and 
a basket of bait. Oh, river Thames, black and mud-like 
what an odious comparison! So we drew near to Saint 
Cloud, the rapid little screw steamer gliding gracefully up 



to the pier, where a long avenue of gold-leaved trees, 
touched already with their autumnal glory, made the scene 
one of exceeding freshness and delight. 

On landing I strolled past the "Pavilion Bleu," a beauti- 
ful balconied cafe in two tiers, whence the strains of a 
string band proceeded agreeably enough. The place was 
all painted white and built in that light and graceful style 
of architecture which the French seem to understand so 
well, and which is as much an index to their playful and 
ease-loving character as the black and gloomy architecture 
of England is to the character of this great nation. I 
strolled through some charming public gardens, and up the 
great heights behind, whence one obtained a commanding 
view of the river and the surrounding country. These 
wooded inclines of Saint Cloud led towards a waterfall, 
where scenery was most picturesque. I returned by boat, 
The fishermen were still there by the river banks. As far 
as I could see they never caught anything at all, but this 
did not trouble them, and their occupation afforded them a 
delicious excuse for idleness. 

One evening at dinner in the hotel I made the acquaint- 
ance of an Englishman who has lived there five years with 
his wife. 

He gave us the history of the trouble he had had in at- 
tempting to oblige the officials with regard to the registra- 
tion of his dog. So many obstacles had been put in his 
way by fussy and impertinent officials that he had retired 
from the fray disgusted, and there sat the dog to this day 
(he pointed to it in the courtyard), unregistered and un- 
ashamed. The system of exacting duty was also replete 
with annoyance. He had gone to the Gare Saint Lazare 
with an English friend to see him off to London, and as 
he happened to have with him a bottle of whiskey, which 
he had purchased that afternoon in Paris, he offered it to 
his friend, thinking he would enjoy it in the train or when 
he got back to England. His friend said, however : "Don't 
trouble ; I shan't take it with me. I shall get some when I 
get home." Having seen the train start, our Englishman 
was about to depart from the station on his way home, 
when an official demanded of him where he got that bottle 
of whiskey. He explained that he had purchased it in 
Paris that afternoon. The official demanded payment of 
duty, unless our friend could produce the receipt from the 
wineshop. Of course he had none. It took half an hour 
to explain matters fully to the group of officials who sur- 
rounded him. At last he got away safe with the bottle. 

I myself was the centre of an animated group of French 

lO 



waiters in a restaurant for a different offence. I had gone 
in for a midday meal, thinking I had enough French coin, 
but when it came to paying I discovered, as I thought, that 
I had not. However, I offered the waiter half a crown in 
English money, and asked for three francs, out of which 
I would pay him. He took it to the manager of the estab- 
lishment, who came and examined it as if it were some 
dangerous curiosity, and sent a waiter out to change it. He 
returned and offered me Fr.1.50 for it. I refused this and 
said I would go myself to any hotel, and the first English- 
man I met would give me three francs for it. I offered to 
leave my umbrella as security. In due time they asked me 
how much French money I had got. I emptied it on the 
table. To my astonishment they assured me it was enough 
to pay the bill — 95 centimes. I had had about three courses 
so it must have been a cheap house. 

As I sit in the lofty room of my hotel in the Rue Jacob 
at night time I find myself fancying the hopes hat have 
lived and flourished and died in this quarter of Paris, where 
the student stalks with his enormous tie and baggy trousers, 
more often than not accompanied by his pet model. 

Imagine the wild dreams of success which has sanctified 
these midnight streets — ^here Dumas wandered, his head 
full of wonderful stories, and his heart beating fit to break 
over some enchanting love affair. 

How well these streets keep their secrets ! They are like 
sphinxes, who know all and utter nothing. 

On these long, winding stairs starving genius fell and 
knelt. This balcony was brushed by the skirts of beauty. 
These boulevards echoed to the shout of the revolutionist. 

Talking of sphinxes reminds me. Coming up in the train 
from Boulogne were two typical honest Frenchwomen, who 
took out their knitting and crewel work, and pursued dili- 
gently for more than an hour this apparently fascinating 
and entirely harmless employment. So absorbed were they 
by their silent occupation that they paid little attention to 
the scenery, save when the train gathered speed and made 
sensational pace. Filled with speculation as to the city 
which we were approaching, I felt something almost un- 
canny in the silent and knowing attitude of these two Fates, 
who were accompanying me on my journey. 

When first I saw my room on the top floor of the hotel, 
the manager lighted me up there with a candle. I was 
greatly struck by its Bohemian aspect. It was just the sort 
of room that I could have settled in in Paris and grown 
fond of. The pity of it is that its innocent-looking walls 
did not proclaim the fact that behind them lurked a host 

II 



of vermin. This was a whited sepulchre, indeed. The 
agreeable size of the room, its simple yet useful furniture, 
its cheerful outlook over the well-washed and irregular 
roofs, its large latticed windows, affording a sufficient 
glimpse of the summer sky; the small bed, partially en- 
closed in a glass alcove, none of these things suggested for 
one moment the actual and horrible discomfort of the 
wakeful nights which followed. True, the wall paper wore 
a suspicious appearance. Rent in places, it did not lie flat 
on the walls, but covered caverns wherein lurked the in- 
numerable hosts of night. I suppose the majority of people 
have not really the courage to denounce the unclean! iness 
of such a room. They do an injustice thereby to those who 
visit it hereafter, and whose word is scarcely believed in 
consequence by the manager. He told me he had never 
had complaints before. It was not difficult for me to decide 
that people in the adjoining room to mine were undergoing 
the same painful experiences as I was myself. To crown 
injury with insult, Keating's Insect Powder is not even sold 
in Paris.* 

An Agent de Police directed me to the Arc de Triomphe, 
which I was anxious to see by night. I was duly im- 
pressed by this tremendous axle of the wheel, whose spokes 
are formed by the great roads radiating from it in all direc- 
tions, and which look especially radiant at night time. 

It was at the Arc de Triomphe that a Frenchman ex- 
plained to me, with much polite hand waving, how to take a 
"correspondence" ticket, so as to travel by several busses 
on one prepaid fare. His explanations were in vain. I 
could not find the ticket office, became impatient, and took 
my seat in a handy taximetre, in which I rolled away down 
the brightly lit avenue to Maxim's Cafe. This, however, 
presented a rather expensive appearance, and, like the rich 
man who was told to part with all his possessions, I went 
sorrowfully away. 

I spent one evening at the Folies Bergere, paying three 
francs for a ticket for the promenade, and witnessing a 
very fine ballet, with a sensational climax such as would 
scarcely be allowed over here. It appeared that a Clown 
had fallen in love with a most beautiful creature, and was 
being helped on his way along the path of roses by a per- 
fect bevy of ladies, who represented Cupid and fairies. 
The course of true love ran fairly smooth, and the curtain 
dropped none too quickly upon an inevitable bedroom scene. 

Wanderers in the grand hall or promenade room of this 

* I did not then know Roberts* in the Rue de la Paix. 

12 



variety theatre are amused by the antics of visitors, who 
favour the slide which runs from the gallery into the hall 
below — a species of water-chute without the water, down 
which one may glide rapidly, alighting, it possible, on one's 
feet on the floor of the hall below, though not all gentle- 
men are so fortunate as to alight thus, some being quite 
sufficiently clumsy to get a nasty bump on the floor as a full 
stop to their rapid flight. Ladies do not favour this spe- 
cies of descent from the upper regions. Facilis descendus 
Averno ; it may be dramatic, but it is too sudden. 

The nuisance of this hall is that you aren't allowed to sit 
down in it without having a drink. As, unless you are for- 
tunate, you have to stand up most of the time in order to 
watch the performance, one greatly resented this restric- 
tion, which is only to be avoided by calling for a succession 
of high-priced drinks. 

I found a friend whom I had known in England. He 
lived in the Rue Quincampoix, a street whose pronouncia- 
tion caused me some trouble at first. He was a German, 
but spoke English fluently. It was like coming out of a 
dark room into light, this discovery of somebody with 
whom one could converse in one's own native language 
after so much foreign clatter. I had lived with him in the 
same boarding-house in London. His place of business in 
Paris was close to the great Halles Centrales — the equiva- 
lent of our Covent Garden Market, but built on a much 
larger scale, a neighborhood of which Zola has discoursed 
so ably in his book, "The Fat and the Thin." I need not 
say that my German friend had very little good to say 
of the French. 

Passing the Bourse one day, I went in, somewhat aston- 
ished that the strict rule against the entrance of strangers 
to our own London Stock Exchange does not apply in 
France. The noise was deafening. Perhaps the din in a 
foreign language seemed exaggerated. I presently found 
myself inside a ring which was apparently sacred to bro- 
kers only — very important-looking men — and I had to 
make the tour of this sacred circle as quickly as possible, 
as I was evidently an intruder. 

Before leaving Paris I paid a visit to La Morgue (which 
in those days was open to the public) and found therein 
four inmates of the terrible glass compartment. One was 
an elderly lady, with a very white face and a black bonnet. 
She looked as though she had simply fallen asleep while 
doing her work, and one felt that she might at any mo- 
ment arise and come to the glass window of the compart- 
ment and tap on it and tell us to go away and cease staring 

13 



at those who sleep : "Can't you let us rest in peace for half 
an hour?" she would say. It seemed a weird thing to 
fancy that one might lie there oneself, utterly unconscious 
of being the cynosure of all those curious eyes and oblivious 
of the remarks made by the crowd. 

Another woman in there looked like a young Italian, 
with bronzed cheeks — such a woman as one might see sell- 
ing fruit in the markets. Her head was turned to one side, 
resting sadly, yet peacefully, on her shoulder. She looked 
tired, yet a distinct smile rested on her features. 

The next glass compartment, or refrigerator — down the 
outside of which streamed the moisture, owing to the ex- 
treme cold within — was occupied by a dead gardener. He 
had quarrelled with another gardener, and his forehead and 
one eye were bashed in by the blow of a spade. He was 
terribly disfigured by this clumsy weapon. The two had 
been working together in the fields and the man who at- 
tacked him had not been caught. 

Notre Dame, close by, was somewhat of a disappoint- 
ment to me ; but I have no doubt that when a great service 
is in full swing one appreciates to the full the magnificence 
of this tremendous edifice. 

My Friend, Mr. Robert Eberhardt, the American sculp- 
tor, related to me the other day an experience of his in the 
Cathedral of Notre Dame. He was visiting the Cathedral 
while a most gorgeous marriage service was being conduct- 
ed. At the same time, in a small chapel in the background, 
the funeral services of a poor woman was being hurried 
through, and as the "Wedding March" struck up the coffin 
was got out of a side door as quickly as possible. The im- 
pression made upon him was such that he felt completely 
disgusted with the Catholic religion. It was not religion — 
it was business. 

I had a glass of absinthe the night before I left P^ds, 
but was not favourably impressed with the mingled taste 
of sweetness and peppermint. 

I saw a pretty sight in the Jardins de Luxembourg. A 
Frenchman was feeding the sparrows, who, gathered to- 
gether on the grass, by the seat where he sat, came one after 
another, flew on to the back of the seat and took the crumbs 
from between his fingers. Many people watched this pretty 
exhibition of confidence on the part of the Parisian spar- 
rows. 

I was quite enchanted with the pictures in the Luxem- 
bourg, and one piece of sculpture was alone worth the visit 
which I made. Inscribed "Pro Patrio," it simply repre- 
sented a fallen youth, recumbent on the ground, his broken 

14 



sword clasped in one hand, and an angelic and satisfied 
smile on his face. In these galleries one is also glad to meet 
with Whistler's "Portrait of His Mother." 

I spent a happy hour sketching the ''Fontaine de Medi- 
cus," in the garden outside, where a gigantic Giant crouches 
above a rock, in a recess beneath which are sheltered two 
lovers, whom he espies, he himself holding out one huge 
hand as though to enforce silence on the part of spec- 
tators. Below, a long pool of water stretches, plentifully 
filled with playful goldfish, an endless source of amuse- 
ment to the children who stray this way, and whose foreign 
prattle forms an agreeable accompaniment to the whispers 
of leaves and the murmuring of waters. Great trees in all 
the luxuriance of their summer foliage shade the sides of 
this delightful pool, the water running down toward it over 
a series of moss-grown steps. I think I should choose this 
spot out of any in Paris to sit by on a summer's day. 

I was far from being inclined to leave Paris after a stay 
of only five days. Indeed, I established at the last moment, 
telegraphic communication with headquarters in London, 
and obtaining the necessary funds, gave myself a final day 
at Versailles. Then I tore myself away by the night train. 
I was extremely sleepy, and passed Boulogne station, find- 
ing myself at Calais half an hour or so later. I should have 
alighted at Boulogne, but the name of the station, ''Bou- 
logne-Tinterelle," puzzled me, and I thought we had to go 
yet a little further to get into the harbour. I misunderstood 
a porter whom I questioned, leaning out of the window. I 
was speedily convinced, however, by the lengthy run which 
the train then took, that I had overshot the mark. Not at 
all anxious to return home yet, I felt indifferent as to the 
consequences of this mistake, feeling sure that I should find 
myself when morning dawned at some equally fine city to 
that which I had just left. The lust of travel was upon me. 

The next station I stepped out at was, however, Calais, 
and I came across by the Calais-Dover night boat, which 
was waiting, steam up, to depart. France seemed to be 
waving an heroic good-bye to me, with the great revolving 
arms of light which flashed across the sea from the Calais 
lighthouse, cutting the darkness of the night into sections 
with their knife-like rays. 

We had a smooth crossing and at Dover were welcomed 
by a similar apparition of revolving beams of light from 
the Dover lighthouse. 

The journey to London was a sleepy one, dawn suddenly 
lighting the landscape with a somewhat cold and weird 
effect before we had long left Dover. 

IS 



I have no great liking for London now. I have left my 
heart behind me, in the long Rue de Rome, and I wish 
once again to whisper compliments in very bad French into 
the charming ear of "Etoile." As it was I did my best to 
tell her that she was an angel ! 

For many days I heard the siren-like call of Paris ring- 
ing in my ears: "Ne seras-tu de retour a cette Ville de 
Lumiere ?" 



i6 



CHAPTER 11. 



SECOND VISIT TO PARIS. 



I was mentioning the siren-like call. It haunted me for 
many a day after my return to London. And often, passing 
Charing Cross Station by chance, I would close my eyes 
and see again, in a vision of the mind, those flashing bea- 
cons of the coast, and dream that I was passing over the 
Channel, under a cloudy moon, which was soon to show 
me the white houses on the seafront of Boulogne. 

I made a point of running down all English institutions 
and authorities, and before my friends I took a gloomy and 
disparaging view of London in particular and England in 
general, drawing all sorts of odious comparisons, invaria- 
bly unfavourable to Great Britain, between the latter coun- 
try and France. *'Look at the mud of the London streets !" 
I would exclaim in wrathful accents. "Look at the black, 
sordid buildings, beside which the fairy-like architecture 
of Paris rises in an eternal attitude of superiority, if not 
scorn. Where," I would exclaim, with something of gen- 
uine regret, "are those happy faces, bathed in the sunshine 
that floods the Tuileries; those voices whose accents ex- 
press so much gusto ; that politeness, that spirit of fratern- 
ity, and all that good red wine of Bordeaux which I miss 
at home?" 

Well, hankering thus after the cafes, if not the flesh-pots 
of Paris, I refused to pick up my wonted bearings in the 
English capital, which for ten years had been my favourite 
resting-place. 

One night I passed up Chancery Lane. It was late, and 
I turned in at a small shop, in the windows of which were 
displayed a profusion of commonplace sweetmeats. One 
could here obtain hot sausages, coffee of a sort, or tea. 

Two youngsters, one evidently English, the other — as I 
discovered later — a New Zealander, were seated at a cloth- 
less table and talking familiarly to the manager, who was a 
foreigner. 

The coffee was very bad. It was composed of an essence, 
an artificial mixture, an arrant and chicory-like imitation. 
As I rose to leave I said to the manager : "This is not the 



sort of coffee they give you in the Paris cafes"— a remark 
which was merely a sample from my large stock of phrases 
derogatory to the land of my birth. 

*'Hi, Mister !" said the New Zealander. And he wanted 
to know all about Paris. He, also, was of opinion that Lon- 
don was not by a long shot the first city in the world. So 
it came about that an acquaintance destined to be fraught 
with so momentous an experience sprang up between us. 

The chance entry into a restaurant of a man carrying 
nothing more substantial or romantic than a tray of jam 
tarts accounted for Robert Louis Stevenson's "New Ara- 
bian Nights." 

For the moment the young New Zealander rose, and, in- 
viting me to accompany him and his friend, whispered a 
few words in an authoritative manner to the manager of 
the "restaurant,'' and left the shop without paying his bill. 
He had evidently come from some distant part of the globe. 

Understanding shorthand and typewriting, he passed 
merrily from one office to the other in London, never stay- 
ing anywhere longer than it pleased him, and carrying in 
his pocket the return half of a ticket to his home in New 
Zealand. 

After having introduced me to his landlady, a kind, 
motherly-looking creature, he announced that he shortly 
expected his uncle, Valentine, who was crossing from Aus- 
tralia. It was Christmas time when this old gentleman 
appeared upon the scene. Although he owned a whole street 
in Christchurch, New Zealand, he just took a humble 
fourth-floor room alongside of his nephew, and as soon as 
I was introduced to him he said, pointing round the room : 

"I'm a plain man, and this is good enough for me." 

I gazed at him reflectively and said: "Would you like to 
pay a few days' visit to Paris? I have a week's holiday 
myself." 

"How much will it cost?" he replied. 

I gave him a very low estimate, and at last it was fixed 
that we should start, I acting as his guide and interpreter. 
The young New Zealander said to me: 

"I shall stay back here. But my uncle Valentine has 
plenty of money. Make him go. He can't speak a word 
of French, but you can. Therefore, you must accompany 
him." 

The following day being Christmas Day, all the banks 
were closed, but the old gentleman went out to some rich 
friends in the suburbs and got some money for Paris. 
Valentine and I then left this suburban villa (which was 
decorated throughout with holly and evergreens, the draw- 

i8 

mmmmmmmgtmmmmmm 



ing-room table being covered with costly presents), and 
were ready to start. 

On Boxing Day, however, much to my disgust, he spent 
all this money in London. 

Another day was fixed for our departure; but at the 
critical moment Mr. Valentine fell ill. However, we started 
at last. And thus it is that I find the following note in 
my diary: 

"Went to Paris rather late in the day with a sick New 
Zealander, who had eaten some onions which had disagreed 
with him." 

I soon found that economy was his strong point, espe- 
cially when in a foreign country. He had been dining in 
the cheapest Italian restaurants he could find in the Soho 
and King's Cross quarters, where sausages and onions oc- 
cupy an important portion of the menu. Hence his indispo- 
sition. 

We got across the Channel quite smoothly, and on ar- 
riving in Paris fell by mistake into a magnificent hotel, the 
address of which had been given to Uncle Valentine by a 
foreign waiter in a Soho restaurant. The waiter said to 
him; "Sir, if. you want a cheap little hotel, go to the Saint 
James and Albany." 

When we drove up it was late at night. The taximetre 
entered a magnificent courtyard and a liveried servant 
sprang down some broad marble steps to meet us. The 
front doors of a vast hotel had opened as if by magic, and 
a blaze of light illuminated the somewhat cadaverous cheeks 
of old Valentine, as he stared around him saying: 

"This is no cheap hotel. Where are we?" 

"However, we arranged with the manager at six francs 
a night per room. He seemed amused at our mistake, and 
said he was giving us specially reasonable terms. 

As for Mr. Valentine, he lit his pipe, picked up a piece 
of string that he found lying on the hall floor, and went 
quietly to bed with it. I found out later that he was a 
miser. 

I had had the greatest difiiculty in persuading him to 
come to Paris. He had pleaded first want of cash, next, 
the stomachic indisposition consequent upon the surfeit of 
decayed onions at a cheap restaurant. And now here he 
was landed in one of the most fashionable hotels of Paris. 
The Duke of Norfolk stopped here only last week. 

This J. Valentine is a strange freak of a creature, fond 
of his money, but a little gone on religion. He always 
carries about with him a small box, the contents of which 
he describes a "lollies." Thus he gave the manager of this 

. 19 



great hotel, just before we came upstairs, a gelatine sweet- 
meat. "Take a lolly?" he said. 

I next day discovered that he had a large stock of them. 
Hb gave hundreds away in Paris, as a small return for 
anyone who did us a service. Sometimes I was obliged, 
when we were sight-seeing, to ask the way of gentlemen 
who as often as not were intelligent and decorated. The 
astonishment of these polite Parisians was as great as my 
chagrin when he inevitably terminated the conversation by : 
'Take a lolly?" proffering at the same time his ridiculous 
box of sweetmeats. Some gazed at the contents in a doubt- 
ful and perplexed fashion, but took one, nevertheless out of 
politeness. Others shook their heads sorrowfully, and 
went away without accepting. 

Their refusal did not touch this hard-skinned old New 
Zealander. He continued his occupation of picking up 
dozens of pins and yards of string in the streets of Paris, 
and perhaps here and there a scrap of the language. 

He could never pass a pin that lay on the pavement with- 
out having pity upon it. The smallest piece of loose string 
straying on the boulevards was precious in his eyes and he 
rescued it from oblivion and put it in his pocket. When 
not thus occupied he was examining the interiors of 
churches. 

On one occasion I got him to go into the Opera House. 
But we sat so far up in the roof that, although we heard 
music we saw nothing. This was his idea of economy. As 
I was paying my own expenses all the way on this trip I 
went down after growling aloud for some time and tipped a 
white-capped woman who stood on guard at a little door 
and was permitted to occupy a box, the rightful owners 
of which had not turned up. From this box I had an ex- 
cellent view of the stage. 

The vast orchestra, held under perfect control, opened 
with astonishing eclat, each stringed instrument gradually 
contributing its iota to the full flood of music. It was as 
though a huge organ were being manipulated by a single 
hand, the stops one by one released giving effect to a ma- 
jestic flow of harmany which accorded well with the stately 
action of the old Biblical story, "Samson and Delilah." 

Valentine said afterwards: 

"There's a place near here where you can get coffee for 
a penny." 

The next day Mariette came to see me at the Hotel Saint 
James, Rue Saint Honore. Since my return to England we 
had kept up a correspondence, and she had indicated to 
me an address in the Rue de Rome, where my letters would 

20 



always reach her. This was a Teinturerie and Blanchis- 
serie combined. Madame Grin here presided over many 
nice girls with spotless white aprons, and piles of clean 
linen, smelling deliciously fresh, steamed on wooden tables. 
Madame Grin forwarded my letters to this charming 
Mariette, I have always since felt an affection for 
Blanchisserie establishments, and as soon as I could escape 
from Uncle Valentine, I went to see Madame Grin. 

Well, Mariette called in due course to see me at the 
hotel — but none told me how she looked, nor what she 
said. I caught no flavour of her trailing skirts. I heard 
no rustle of her coloured satins. No leaf fell from her 
bouquet — not a petal of the scarlet geranium, not a pearl- 
like bell of the lily-of-the-valley. Perhaps she may never 
even read these words. She passed, like dawn's grey- 
golden clouds of glory, which fade into new shapes, even 
as the memory strives to capture them, leaving no solace 
to the watcher save a ghostly gallery stored with pictures 
of the imagination. 

She waited for me for two hours. 

I was out in the street, being misdirected, riding in the 
wrong omnibuses, and paying excess fares. I might at 
that moment have been kneeling at her feet, while she 
translated to me all the poetry of France in one love-laden 
sigh ! 

No, I was down the other end of the Rue de Rome, 
talking to Madame Grin, who used to pass my letters to 
her. 

"Why !" said Madame Grin, "it is to-day, not to-morrow 
that she comes to see you!" 

Oh, horror — a hasty glance at a French postmark. "De- 
main" — reads her letter, "I shall be passing your hotel and 
will look in." "Demain !" But to-morrow has come. It 
is an error in reading the postmark, which has convinced 
me that she means Sunday — not Saturday. 

All that beauty is lost. For this alone I crossed the 
Channel, pawning my gold chain, rushing in the face of 
Prudence. 

Oh, Red and Yellow of Despair — Hell's angels flash me 
the sudden signals. My heart beats like the engine of a loo- 
h.p. Panhard. What a sweet mockery. To the Batignolles 
— to the Batignolles ! It may be that I shall reach the hotel 
before she leaves it. I do not. Fate again interposes with 
an oily finger and a grim, Saturnine smile. I am mis- 
directed. Hark — a chorus of confused voices seems to 
hum in my ear! Rue Saint Honore! Through the court- 
yard. The great glass hall, with its ferns and palms, and 

21 



dainty basket-work chairs and tables, is empty. She is not 

there. 

A bearded man in livery looks gravely, if not sarcasti- 
cally, at me from behind the raised bureau : 

"A letter for you, sir. A lady has waited for more than 
two hours." 

Hell's torment ! The heavens rain white-hot arrows into 
my furious heart. Look at the postmark! 

Yet I dread to open the letter which she has left. It is in 
French. It is easy to read. Two sentences out of a dozen 
fly before my eyes like chariots which race to death : 

"Waited two hours. Ce n'est pas gentil." 

"If you deign," the letter continues (I deign?) "to reply 
to this letter, say that you will meet me to-morrow, at two 
hours." 

To-morrow comes. I have written meanwhile to say 
that I shall wait not only till two hours, but until I see her. 

The table shakes while I write the letter. The lantern- 
jawed New Zealander, dressed like a cheap tripper, com- 
plains to me that the table is shaking. I scarcely hear his 
common accents. I scarcely see his little weazel-like face. 
The shrivelled creases on his brow betoken a miser. The 
cautious eyes. Great God, this is all a repetition. I re- 
member once before when I dared to love a woman that a 
lean ungodly old reprobate got mixed up in it, and con- 
fused me 



Yes, yes; what was I saying — thank you! Again the 
cold sponge. That was most refreshing. Ah, yes, a gay 
city, Paris! Une belle ville! 

I forgot — I was telling you how I wrote confirming the 
fresh appointment — ^the letter than made the table shake so 
much. 

Yes — it fell into her husband's hands. \^ 

Just my luck. 

It was New Year's Eve the next day. I remember it, 
for the following day I sailed for England. 

And Mariette died — I tell you she died — for I have 
never heard of her since. 

Before I and the New Zealander — who said he thought 
things had passed off fairly well in Paris — returned by the 
night train to London, I had occasion to call up at the offices 
of the "Daily Mail" in Paris, which were then situated in 
the Place de la Madeleine. The editor in charge, to whom 
I sent in my card, confided to me that he had need of an 
expert shorthand writer to take down two calls nightly on 

22 



the telephone, news being thus dictated from the London 
office in Carmehte House, for publication in the Continental 
edition. 

"I said: "Yes, if you can give me three pounds a week 
and seven days to store my things in London, we'll call it 
a deal." 

There was nothing signed on paper, but a week later, 
having in the interval crossed the Channel, deposited the 
New Zealander at the house of his nephew in London, and 
stored my goods, I presented myself at Place de la Made- 
leine and took up my duties. 

I find in my diary: "Hang this awful telephone across 
the Channel. In this stormy winter weather when the 
winds do blow, the cables shiver under the sea, and the 
ocean bed is rocked, and one heards strange murmurings 
mixed with the monotonous voice of Hamilton, who is 
speaking from the "Daily Mail" offices in Carmelite Street, 
London : 

"In the Divorce Court to-day" — bubble-bubble-bubble — 
"Mrs. Jack Shoebury"— bubble-bubble— "Mr. John Horse- 
ferry was the co-respondent. The servant said — Mr. Jus- 
tice — ^granted a decree nisi." 

Fill in the gaps with bubble-bubble, and there you have a 
complete Law Court case as I hear it over the telephone in 
Paris, plus the interference of winds and waves. 

Awfully amusing, isn't it, when you're getting a salary of 
Frs.40 a week, instead of the Frs. 75.00 which was prom- 
ised. 

Still, I might be happy in Paris, perhaps. But I must 
work at my drawing. 



23 



CHEZ MERSON. 

January i6, 1906. 
(My first visit to Monsieur Luc-Olivier Merson, Membre 
de rinstitut, Grand Officier de la Legion d'Honneur, 
one of the Professors of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.) 

That was a real studio. And how excellently he spoke 
French. 

When I rang the Bohemian-looking cord that hung at the 
door of the "deuxieme etage/' I heard the bark of a dog 
within. Then the door opened and a large grave man, like 
Cyclops, stood before me, framed in a mysterious darkness. 
Entrez ! 

I stood a moment at the threshold of the vast studio. He 
bowed. "Entrez" he repeated. 

Monsieur Merson, of Rue Denfert Rochereau. A huge 
darkened room. A stove. A lamp on the table. Shadows. 
Silence. We chatted of England, which he had never visit- 
ed. It was a charming half-hour. 

He looked at my sketches and approved some. Gave me 
his card, with the name of his atelier written thereon. I 
learnt afterwards that his name is known throughout Paris. 
I stood in the presence of one of those poets whose fingers 
trace upon the canvas a story delicate and entrancing as the 
voice of a woman. This rugged exterior — these weighty 
and measured steps — impress one with a sense of power. 
Here is a presence which impels respect; for behind this 
screen of courteous reserve lies the knowledge of what is 
truth in Art — lies Art itself, in all its dazzling and won- 
drous variations. 

Here in this tranquil studio,- amid so many venerable 
tomes and graceful paintings, a spiritual voice seems to 
breathe its message of counsel and warning. This voice 
cannot be heard out amid the noise of actual life. It tells 
me that now is the day of opportunity, and that soon the 
Night Cometh, in which no man can work. 

I shall not soon forget this great studio, with its lofty 
easels, the tops of which were lost in the darkness of the 
large chamber. 

I left him with his kindly "au revoir" echoing in my ears. 



24 



CHAPTER III. 



L'ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS. 



The Gates of Paradise. 

Hark, in this quiet square a trilling note! One stands 
alone in great shadows, but the sunlight strikes up yonder 
on the blue wall — and a flash of radiant spring foliage — 
soft, faint green against red-grey stones, trembles up there 
above us. 

This is the courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. How 
quiet, how seemly everything is. We might well be stand- 
ing in the courtyard of a country inn. The roaring of Paris 
has gone out of our ears. Here a crouching faun, there a 
dancing nymph assume exquisite attitudes, and seem, all 
stone though they are, to be on the point of speaking to 
one. But the note of the bird aforementioned is all that 
one hears. Up these well-worn staircases, bounded by 
walls scribbled all over with the names of art students, we 
climb to the class-rooms, now deserted, for it is a Saint's 
Day. Some bread-crumbs lie about and a pile of ashes of 
paper, doubtless some burnt-out torch with which a harum- 
scarum Bohemian lit his or a friend's cigarette, incidentally 
singeing his moustache off in the act. 

Inside the Doors. 

I am an old bird, not lightly to be caught, and I came 
down joyfully, under the warm sun, from the heights 
where the lovely Church of Sacre Coeur sends the white 
oval of its dome high into the blue sky, with many a glit- 
tering pinnacle of snow-white stone; and away into the 
roaring traffic of the great boulevards, and so across the 
river to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. With the ripened ex- 
perience of an old student of Westminster Art School, and 
later of St. Martin's, in Long Acre, I had certainly expect- 
ed some sort of supervision in a class composed mostly of 
raw youngsters, many of whom have not yet learnt to take 
anything seriously, even their favourite Art. 

But I soon found, on looking into the atelier, that what 
work one wished to do there must be done amid a jumble 

25 



and confusion of noise — call it the exuberance of youthful 
spirits if you will — which makes serious study a practical 
impossibility. This is the first Art "School" (sic) of Paris. 
True the school is visited twice in a week by M. Luc-Olivier 
Merson, the master of that particular atelier where I was 
to work. The students had been busy scribbling on the wall 
a set of satirical verses regarding his teaching, under the 
title of "The Commandments of Saint Luc." He happened 
to be there when I arrived, and I was formally introduced 
to him, which was unnecessary, seeing that I had met hirn 
several times before in his private atelier. A charming and 
witty Frenchman, his presence always commands a respect- 
ful silence. But immediately he left the room a storm and 
tumult of noise broke out. Some seemed to imitate the up- 
roarious trumpeting of the elephant, another student hailed 
down upon us from a ladder the gallant crownings of a 
chanticleer, while shreds and scraps of songs rent the air 
in every direction. 

The tumult never seemed to die out entirely. It ap- 
peared to constitute the normal state of the school, and has 
already in my experience lasted three or four days without 
cessation. In fact, I began to believe that each student 
was rather afraid of making less noise than his neighbour, 
and felt it his duty, on pain perhaps of expulsion from this 
"School of Art," to emulate his fellows in making more 
weird cat-calls than the rest. 

This is a very youthful system of terrorisation. And 
having paid my forty francs entrance fee to the massier — 
my contribution towards the general fund for maintenance 
and upkeep of the atelier — and then, at the unanimous sum- 
mons of the whole school, led the way to the adjoining 
tabac, and stood some forty bocks and other drinks, as a 
sort of footing, I felt that I was quite entitled to reply, 
when some jovial student required of me the next 4ay, 
while the model was sitting, a song (even if it were only 
"God Save the King," he naively suggested) that, apart 
from the difficulty which has ever, since the days of the 
Psalmist, attached to the singing of songs by a stranger in 
a foreign land, I had not come to the School of Art to learn 
singing, but to learn drawing. "Je ne suis pas ici dans le 
but d'apprendre a chanter; mais je commence a croire que 
ceci est peut-etre un ecole de chantage." 

But it was ever thus, I trow. Every possible obstacle is 
placed in the light of a student, when he endeavors seri- 
ously to acquire some knowledge that will stand him in 
good stead in the future. That is why we see these idle 
and noisy students cutting such a bad figure when their 

26 



student days are finished, and when they have entered into 
the real struggles of life. They are then forced to regard 
Art seriously, when it is too late. 

As far as I can learn, many of them are entirely idle 
when the school closes at eleven o'clock a.m. For the rest 
of the day they must loaf about in the Latin Quarter, an- 
noying the little working girls, who run before^them bare- 
headed in the streets. They do not know what real work 
is. The hours of the school are in the summer 7 a.m. 
till 11.30 a.m. After that I go to my office and work, and 
they wonder how it is that I have more money than they 
have,^ and can afford to drive down to the school in the 
morning in a taximetre! 

One of the students of the above-mentioned National 
School of Art took me this morning, after the class had 
risen, to the "Academie Julian," in the Rue de Dragon. 
Here all was quiet and decorous. There was plenty of 
room, plenty of light, and plenty of beautiful and some 
very valuable paintings left on the walls by former stu- 
dents, many of whom have since set their mark high on 
the roll of Fame. 



There is no silence more eloquent than that which per- 
vades the cloisters of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts during the 
Long Vacation. 

Amidst the various whispers of the old trees, the falls of 
the fountain in the courtyard, and the songs of birds who 
haunt this artistic quarter, there is one thing wanting — the 
joyous voice of the students. They are scattered through- 
out Normandy, Brittany, and the Southern Provinces. 
Likewise their professors. 

Monsieur Luc-Olivier Merson, Professor of our own 
atelier, has gone down to his chateau in Brittany, and is 
sitting under the trees in the vast garden of the 'Chateau 
du Fransic, par Morlais, Finistere," where he divides his 
time between fishing in the river and sketching delicate 
outlines of wild flowers and tangled foliage, to serve later 
on as valuable "documents" in decorative work. An old 
"Prix de Rome" man, his criticisms are always severe, but 
this must be expected from so formidable a master of the 
Decorative Arts as Monsieur Merson, whose principal work 
adorns the Foyer of the Opera Comique and the halls of 
the Hotel de Ville. 

I shall not find M. Jean Veber in town. The favourite 
caricaturist of Parisians is included in the general exodus, 

27 



though he has not gone so far afield for his holiday as 
some. He has taken his family only to Chaudry par Mon- 
soult, a quiet village in the Department of the Seine and 
Oise, and here, although holiday-making, his ever watchful 
eye is sure to note something humorous which will come 
at the proper time before the eye of the public. 

Tiens! there goes Paltz, shuffling through the Cour de 
Murier with a canvas under his arm. I must ask him what 
he is doing in town at this season of the year. 

Paltz, whose head is as full of history as the Bibliotheque 
Nationale, says that T am to give you the following details, 
for which he will make no extra charge: 

"On the site now occupied by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts 
of Paris, there once stood the Convent of the Petits Augus- 
tins, founded in 1613 by Marguerite of Valois, the first 
wife of Henri Quartre. In the year 1790 this Convent 
became national property, and was used as a museum, 
wherein were collected and safeguarded from the fury of 
the Revolutionists, rare and valuable works of sculpture in 
wood and marble which, if left standing in the churches, 
were at that time hacked to pieces by the apostles of van- 
dalism. Thus we learn (from the infallible Paltz) that 
the Revolutionary Committees actually issued an order in 
1793 for the burning in a public place of four hundred 
and ninety priceless oil paintings of noblemen, princes, and 
prelates. 

"The architect, Alexander Lenoir, secured from destruc- 
tion at this period, and concealed under the arched vaults 
of the Convent of the Petits Augustins, a vast collection of 
art treasures — statues, ancient doorways, historical tomb- 
stones, in the crevices of which latter (if we are to trust 
the word of Paltz) still lay the dust of kings. 

"In 181 5 this museum became a School of Fine Arts. 
In 1819 the actual buildings of the present school were 
begun. 

"Let us conclude our tour by a visit to the tranquil 
cloisters of the Ecole, which are called the "Cour du 
Murier.' Here some Parisian sparrows are disporting 
themselves in the circular marble basin where the spark- 
ling waters of the fountain fall musically. 

"In one angle of these cloisters stands the statue of 
Henri Regnault, an angel offering him a laurel leaf. This 
monument was erected by the students in honour of the 
young artist, who fell fighting for France in the year 1871." 

28 



CHAPTER IV. 



HOW TO ENTER THE ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS. 



With the advent of the autumn term, some hints may not 
come amiss as to the steps which English and American 
students may take to obtain admittance into what is gen- 
erally recognised as the first Art School in the world. 

The author of this book, on his arrival in Paris, was 
sauntering through the Louvre one day, when he asked 
this very question of a French artist who was copying 
Murillo's 'Te Jeune Mendicant." This artist at once gave 
the private address of his old master. Monsieur Luc-Olivier 
Merson. A visit to this latter gentleman, whose courteous 
reception in his fine private studio near the Luxembourg 
Gardens was the commencement of a lasting frinedship, 
resulted in the necessary letter of introduction to the 
Massier of M. Merson's atelier in the Ecole des Beaux- 
Arts. 

First, however, it was necessary to call at the British 
Embassy and present a certificate of birth, which was easily 
obtainable for a fee of three shillings and sixpence from 
Somerset House, London. This certificate set forth, above 
an official signature, your age, parentage, nationality, and 
place of birth. 

The Ambassador's secretary glanced at the document 
and forthwith gave the English aspirant to artistic honours 
the necessary paper for presentation in the Bureau of the 
Ecole. This paper took the form of a signed official letter 
bearing the Embassy stamp, and contained a polite request 
to the French authorities that they should favourably con- 
sider this application for entrance. Armed with this docu- 
ment and M. Merson's letter of introduction, I went to the 
bureau of the School on the Quai Malaquais, and was duly 
entered on the books as a student, free to work in the ate- 
liers and receive instruction from the greatest masters of 
their art at no cost whatever to myself — beyond bare mate- 
rials and the initial fee of Fr.40 — till I reached the age of 
thirty. 

At the cost of perhaps Fr.25 for drinks all round, the 

29 



thirty students of your atelier must be "treated" in a neigh- 
bouring cafe, and a fine, uproarious meeting this is. Work 
is abandoned, easels and stools fall to the ground in the 
hurried rush of the stampede, the air model throws a cloak 
round her gracious form and, giving her arm to a favourite, 
is escorted in triumph to the cafe chosen by the atelier, 
where hot coffee, Dubonnets, vin blancs, and other bever- 
ages are the order of the moment. 

On the way back through the streets, many a pretty 
grisette falls a prey to the caprices of this merry crowd, is 
enticed into the procession, and even has to submit to a 
few kisses. 

With these preliminary remarks, let us give a rough 
sketch of the arrangements, curriculum and characteristics 
of the school itself. 

*The Ecole des Beaux-Arts ranks highest amongst all the 
important Schools of Art of Paris, and is the richest in 
historical relics, architectural beauty, and artistic associa- 
tions. 

No opportunity has been missed to stimulate the artistic 
taste of its pupils. Here, for more than a century, have 
been coUeced and gathered together the most beautiful 
monuments of ancient France, a vast accumulation of 
plaster casts, of statues belonging to all epochs ; copies, pa- 
tiently collected, of the most renowned pictures of Europe, 
documents of every description susceptible of bringing 
artistic instruction to the young artist, and this collection 
forms a tout ensemble unique in the world. 

There is no school to which access is so facile to 
strangers, nor where the course of study is so freely en- 
joyed. The consent of the Chef d' Atelier once obtained, 
the young man who wishes to become a painter, sculptor, 
artist, or engraver, enters absolutely free into the ateliers, 
where for many years he will be afforded the most expert 
instruction, and where living models pose for him each 
week. 

The professors are chosen from amongst the most cele- 
brated masters of their period. The young foreigner will 
easily be able to choose, according to his tastes already 
awakened, the atelier which he ought to seek to enter. He 
will pass under the doorway of M. Cormon if he favours 
a bold, untrammelled and luxuriant style of painting, and 
subjects full of a sturdy and truculent composition. He 
will commit his future to the sagacity of M. Luc-Olivier 
Merson, if a sensitive taste leads him to pursue a more 
delicate and fanciful style. 

M. Ferrier teaches, in the third atelier, a precise style of 

. 30 



his own, which tends with so much success towards the 
dehneation of the most seductive forms of beauty. 

The fourth ateher is reserved for women. It is under 
the direction of M. Humbert, the elegancy of whose art is 
sufficiently well known. 

The sculptors have at their disposition just as many ate- 
liers. There is not a school which has contributed more to 
spread to foreigners the pure and classic style of France. 
No American or other foreign artist has been able properly 
to complete the course of his art studies if he has not 
passed some of his time in the Ecole of the Rue Bonaparte. 
One can learn mathematics, mechanics, or chemistry in 
Germany or Switzerland; the art of war in the campaigns 
of other nations, and commerce in England or America. 
But to become a good painter one must study in Paris. 

As to architecture, it may fairly be said that most of the 
greatest American architects have passed through the Ecole 
des Beaux-Arts. 

Moreover, the Ecole is gradually expanding its influence 
in many directions. There is no nationality which does not 
find its representative among the students. The atelier 
Cormon counts amongst its members three Japanese. 

The course of instruction is divided into weeks — that is 
to say, each atelier keeps the same model for one entire 
week. Each month the pose is taken during one week by 
a female model. 

The ateliers of painting and sculpture are only open in 
the morning. The chef of the atelier comes to criticise 
twice a week. The afternoons are devoted to classes and 
examinations of all kinds, for which entrance is optional — 
there are lectures on anatomy, with the living model and 
the dead model; courses of archaeology, perspective, chem- 
istry, history, and literature — for a painter should be well- 
read both in modern and classical history. All this instruc- 
tion, profound and complete as it is, is absolutely gratuitous. 

The Gaiety of the Pupils. 

The gaiety of the pupils of the Beaux-Arts is proverbial. 
It is due, firstly, to the nature of the studies, which require, 
more than any other form of creative art, liberty of thought. 
It is also due to the youthfulness of the students, who are 
admitted up to the age of thirty only. 

Each atelier is administered by a massier, chosen by 
election among the students. He is charged with the ad- 
ministration of his atelier and is the arbitrator in any dis- 
putes. 

Monday is always an extremely picturesque day. This is 

31 



the day when the models present themselves to be elected 
by the atelier for a sitting and retained in advance. Troops 
of male and femals models pay visits from one atelier to 
another, seeking "des semaines/' as they term their weekly 
engagements. These models are for the most part Italians, 
with copper-coloured skin, black and amber-coloured hair, 
and deep, unfathomable eyes. However free and unre- 
strained may be the preliminary chaff engendered of neces- 
sity by the presence of so many young unruly people and 
the liberty of the spectacle, this is always a minute of deli- 
cate emotion. It is the hour for the choice of a female 
model. The candidates, speedily prepared, present them- 
selves, often blushing, to the examination of all these young 
men. The universal attention inspires almost always a 
minute of respectful silence — even supposing the "sub- 
ject," as often happens, is little worthy of admiration. For 
after all, we are in the world of artists, for whom the nude 
is sacred. The atelier votes for the model of their choice 
by a show of hands. 

Reception of a New Student. 

The reception of a new student is a very curious cere- 
mony. We find ourselves amongst an assembly the tradi- 
tions of which have been handed down from generation to 
generation. 

A new pupil, on his entry to this school, has his entire 
personality put to the test, and can conceal nothing. The 
"anciens," or senior pupils, examine him with severity, and 
if they judge him defective, either in colour or form, they 
"retouch" him and put in a few "accents" here and there 
with brush strokes. If he is too pale, a little vermilion 
gives him a "bonne mine." Or, if he is too red, his looks 
are improved in the other direction and he is made paler. 
Then, in order to guard against losing him entirely, he is 
"stamped" at the students' leisure, with an iron punch or 
die, which bears the initials of the atelier, and which, 
heated to a white heat, serves to mark the easels and stools. 
This die, cleverly painted, possesses happily only the aspect 
of having come out of the fire — but the illusion is complete. 

The new pupil must sing, dance a jig if he is an Ameri- 
can, and climb up to the cornice of the room, whilst his new 
companions drink or smoke to his health. 

But all of a sudden the Inspector is announced. All the 
atelier immediately settles down to work. The unhappy 
new pupil finds himself at once abandoned, and moreover 
in a most painful condition as regards apparel. To the 
interrogatories of this Inspector, the massier, acting as the 



authorised spokesman, replies that the new pupil has tried, 
in spite of all the efforts of his comrades, to divest himself 
of his clothes, and that he never ceases to sing and dance, 
according to the customs of his country. One can judge 
into what a rage the Inspector flies. "Where do you come 
from — Hey? In what country are such customs prac- 
tised? Where is your family? I will await you presently 
in my office, where I will notify you of the punishment you 
merit!" 

This Inspector is not alone. He is accompanied by one 
or two high functionaries. These gentlemen are attired in 
frock coats and tall silk hats, and are decorated. Carrying 
portfolios under their arms, they make a formidable im- 
pression. It does not enter into the head of the unhappy 
new pupil that all this is false, and that the real Inspector 
— whom he will presently go in search for, very uneasy as 
to what awaits him — will unveil to him with kindliness the 
malice of his comrades. 

This malice is inexhaustible. Things are cited which 
appear incredible, and which are, however, historic. For 
instance, in an atelier of architecture which is situated on 
the ground floor, the new pupils were employed in hollow- 
ing out a so-called "well," in search of hidden treasure. 
The floor of the room had been carefully removed over a 
certain space, and the well was hollowed to a depth of 
three metres — nine feet — before the Administration had 
learnt of the fact. 

Sometimes the school overflows outside its boundaries, 
and the Quarter Bonaparte is accustomed to bizarre and 
noisy extravagancies. The police shut their eyes, for they 
know that this is only the natural superabundance of youth- 
ful spirits, which finds satisfaction in this way. 

Once, however, the school surpassed itself. It was at 
that epoch when Paris was in a fever, for and against 
General Boulanger. One of the ateliers of the Ecole had 
just received a new pupil who somewhat resembled the 
General. The likeness was sufficiently close to inspire his 
comrades with a great idea. A general's uniform was 
quickly found, the student was thrown in this guise on a 
great plank seized from the architectural department, and 
the procession set out in triumph through the streets of 
Paris, towards the Hotel du Louvre, where the real Gen- 
eral was stopping. This time the musicians of the archi- 
tectural atelier formed part of the procession. The aston- 
ished cockneys of Paris did not know what to make of the 
scene. Great numbers of the populace mistook him for 
the real General and turned the manifestation into some-. 



?^ 



thing very nearly approaching a riot. At the end of an 
hour of uproarious promenade, during which time this 
troop of students had by degrees been augmented by less 
sympathetic elements of the populace, it was none too 
early to retire behind the strong gateways of the old 
school.* 

Another incident within the memory of many of the 
present students in our own atelier is worth describing. I 
got it from Gillot the other night, when we were dining to- 
gether in the Monasterial Hotel. 

It appears that in those times the new student came in for 
more practical jokes than nowadays, and one new arrival 
had his hat stolen and hidden. He came up next day with- 
out a hat, and so on all through the week. When ques- 
tioned as to why he did not buy another hat, he said he had 
no money. 

Presently the whole atelier of thirty or forty students 
rose as one man and went out together They made their 
way to "La Belle Jardiniere," one of the enormous Parisian 
Magazins, where one can buy anything at fairly popular 
prices. Here they invaded the establishment. Stern man- 
agers, icy under-managers, and grave shop-walkers looked 
askance as the entire atelier, forming procession, started 
marching round the huge building, exploring everywhere, 
up stairs and down, chatting unconcernedly with the young 
girl employees who were serving customers, and even kiss- 
ing these pretty maids, and singing choruses at the tops of 
their voices. In fact, they carried on just as they were 
accustomed to do in and out of the atelier, whenever they 
mustered their forces. 

The managers of the great haberdashery and other de- 
partments frowned and stamped. 'Twas all in vain. Under 
pretext of searching the building to find a suitable hat for 
their comrade, the atelier made the roof ring with riotous 
song and mocking speeches, the latter delivered from every 
point of vantage in the lofty galleries. 

At their wits' end, the management sent for the police. 
But even then it took two or three hours to rid the build- 
ing of these lively young invaders, who were asking the 
shop girls if they found their work not too hard, or if they 
had any complaints to make, for now was the time to make 
them! 

At last the hat was chosen, and then forty unruly stu- 
dents insisted upon passing one after the other before the 
"cassie," or cash desk, and paying each his contribution 

*M. Jean Veber, the great caricaturist and painter, who passed 
his youth studying in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, related this inci- 
dent to me. 

^ 34 



towards the price of the hat — that is to say, two or three 
sous apiece. 

At last, in their own good time, the ateHer, having 
bought and paid for the hat, moved off in a body chaffing 
right and left and singing their uproarious songs for all 
the world to hear! 



It is difficult to convey a just idea of the "atmosphere" 
of the atelier Merson. The accompanying photograph is 
not, however, without value. Here we see the atelier it- 
self, with the model posing — hiding her face demurely, 
because she does not wish to be recognised in the photo. 
Behind her, to the right, standing aloft, is the dark and 
sombre figure of Boissart, the massier, in his shirt sleeves. 
The window of the atelier, which gives on the beautiful 
gardens of the Director of the School, is open, but unfor- 
tunately a mirthful student in the background is holding 
up a large canvas, on which is painted the portrait of our 
Professor, Monsieur Luc-Olivier Merson. This canvas, 
though it may be an excellent portrait, unfortunately ob- 
scures the charming gardens. 

To the left of the model kindly observe the unblushing 
and benign countenance of our dear Professor. His hair is 
white, his expression is full of humour, and his wrinkled 
forehead hides a store of knowledge. 

You should certainly visit the ateHer. You would proba- 
bly be welcomed with some flying missiles ; an open box of 
soft soap such as we use for cleaning our brushes might be 
flung with great force, and, smashing on the wall above 
your head, would spray your spotless "complet" with a 
putty-like mixture, so that your own tailor would not know 
you. After being invited in a loud voice by the whole ate- 
lier to "fouter a poll !" you would probably be spared that 
painful operation on the condition that you stood drinks to 
the atelier, which yould would hasten to do. 

The raucous cries of these young and ardent savages, 
who seemed a moment earlier to be thirsting for your blood, 
and one of whom was crying in an authoritative voice: 
"Faites chauffer les f ers !" (''Heat the torture irons") 
would then be changed into a more dulcet chorus, and, 
heigho! for the nearest cafe. 



35 



CHAPTER V. 



THE BAL DE QUAT'Z ARTS. 



The Bal de Qut'z Arts is an annual fete got up by the 
Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Students buy their tickets in the 
atelier to which they belong, for five francs each, on the 
morning of the Fete. These are sold by the massier, who is 
seated in state at an impromptu desk generally made of 
soap boxes or empty packing-cases. He gives no credit. 

Each students receives in exchange for five francs a large 
entrance card, in the form of a brilliant design, on which is 
pictured the frincipal features of the ball. The student also 
receives, if he asks for it, a smaller card, with very elegant 
illuminated design, which enables him to conduct any lady 
of his choice to the ball, provided she is pretty. He gen- 
erally chooses a model. 

This year, 1907, costume of the period described as ''Les 
Guerres Mediques, Entree de Xerxes Dans Athens," was 
de rigueur. Admission was strictly refused to those arriv- 
ing without this costume, even though they possessed en- 
trance cards. 

The ball had been previously advertised in huge red pos- 
ters* displayed in each of the ateliers. These printed docu- 
ments were remarkable compositions. Compiled by the joint 
efforts of the massiers of the various ateliers, they abound- 
ed with the slang of the student. They announced, inci- 
dentally, that the ball was to take place in the Salle de VHip- 
podrome, Boulevard de Clichy, Montmartre. ^^ 

I had a magnificent robe of many colours, with a red 
manteau, and was very uncomfortable. 

The obtaining of this costume was a frightful nuisance. 
In company with a French student called Paltz, I visited a 
couturier's in the Rue Faubourg Montmartre. The place 
was packed with students and models. Paltz, who has 
never got a sou, but has abundant red locks, sometimes 
poses as a model in our atelier, so as to gain a little money 
to go on with, when he has not sold many pictures. He is 
married, and lives on the heights of Montmartre. He and 
I had had a long wrangle with Boissart, the massier, that 

* Specimen poster is quoted in French at the end of this chapter. 

36 



morning. We tried to persuade him to let us have our en- 
trance tickets on credit till the end of the month. But the 
massier was very ''rosse," or inflexible, and we had to raise 
cash. 

My "copin," the long-locked Paltz, being obliged to study 
economy, had used as costume his bed-blankets, fashioning 
out of them a remarkable toga. Some antimacassars taken 
from the backs of the chairs of his concierge's sitting-room 
added eclat to his costume, and thus arrayed he gaily de- 
scended with me from the heights of Montmartre when 
evening fell. He was supremely indifferent to the curiosity 
of the crowd, who stared at him in the streets and on the 
Metro, through which we passed on our way to the Hippo- 
drome. 

The cafes in the neighbourhood of this hall were over- 
flowing on Wednesday night, June 9, at eight o'clock, with 
students stained a dark colour, who looked more like Red 
Indians than ancient Greeks, with marvellous headgear 
and less costume than the Scottish Highlanders, who en' 
tered the cafe brandishing a six-foot spear, with a wild war- 
whoop, and took a bock, previous to going in with the rest 
of their atelier to the hall where the dance was. Parisians 
were very much amused — those who happened to be seated 
in the said cafes — and they regard student life as a species 
of madness, which it sometimes is. 

Although costumes were '*de rigueur," it happened that 
long before the clocks struck midnight the female contingent 
of this riotous assembly had dispensed, for the most part, 
with every vestige of garment. Some, indeed, had not far 
to go to arrive at this stage, as, after taking their cloaks off 
in the vestibule of the hall, they appeared clad only in the 
thinnest of gauze veils, which they either discarded of their 
own free will after the first "stirrup-cup" of champagne, or 
lost as they pressed through the dense throngs of dancing 
Grecian heroes, who waylaid their every step. One girl of 
great beauty bore upon her dazzling white shoulder a rose- 
red scar, which she had won in the hand-to-hand grapple 
with some ardent satyr. 

The floor of the vast hall was quickly invaded by hosts of 
Grecian warriors and their fair companions. Cors de chasse 
made the air ring with their deafening strains. The ears 
were stunned by the clamour of the paid orchestra, com- 
peting with the shouts of students and the echoing clash of 
cymbals. 

On two sides of the hall extended for its full length a lofty 
gallery, in front of which were fitted up the "loges," or pri- 
vate boxes, belonging to each of the different ateliers. These 

37 



were reached by numerous staircases. Weird and extrava- 
gant goblins made of wood or cardboard, with movable 
mouths an tails, leered and gibbered down upon the tumult- 
uous throng from the front of these "loges." It was in 
these curtained boxes that, notwithstanding the din of or- 
chestral competition, lovers found shadowy corners wherein 
to whisper once again their vows. 

Early in the evening a gorgeous procession of decorative 
cars made the round of the vast hall. Each atelier con- 
tributed its allegorical car, or "float," illustrating some as- 
pect of Grecian history. The Architectural students of the 
Ecole had naturally prepared the most splendid of these 
enormous cars, a Greek temple, which was decorated with 
birds and beasts of heroic size. Pray regard, perched upon 
the summit of one of them, and far above the crowd, this 
nude and angelic-looking girl, who stands high and fearless 
on that dizzy height, the while weird creatures, whose limbs 
are all wound about with red-and-gilt trappings, and whose 
faces are blacked like devils, push the great car slowly 
round the dense-packed hall, beating the while their deafen- 
ing brass or tin-ware cymbals, and shrieking a wild war 
dance. 

Some Agents de Police are hugely enjoying the spectacle 
from their vantage points in the gallery, but as they have 
never been known to interfere with anything that takes 
place, and as their sole chance of safety consists in sitting 
perfectly quiet and smiling at all they see, they fill an orna- 
mental rather than a useful post. It is even related that in 
the days gone by Lepine himself was actualy refused en- 
trance to this orgie. 

What license, what colour, what riot of youth and exuber- 
ance! Thus lived the Roman decadents centuries ago. 
Every eye flashes with the pride of absolute liberty, every 
girl is soft and beautiful to behold. 

The students took large baskets of food, which were 
opened at about two a. m. Those who did not bring wine 
bought champagne in the hall. Indeed, after two o'clock in 
the morning the hall of the Hippodrome somewhat resem- 
bled a battlefield, where lay strewn in gorgeous confusion 
the robed and the robeless, equally vanquished through hav- 
ing looked upon too much wine when it was red. One 
would have said that a vast Sultanic harem had been laid 
siege to by the hot-headed heroes of another age, who had 
seen to it that none of the damsels had escaped. 

Here and there, wrapt inextricably in a fond embrace, a 
Grecian warrior and the lady of his choice seemed to sleep 
oblivious of all the trumpeting of all the cors de chasse. 

38 



These couples seemed as deep-sunk in their mutual happi- 
ness as the opium-drinker on his silken couch. They were 
clad in whatever particles of raiment happened to be left 
to them. Others still found strength to support themselves 
at the bar, where the gargons served cooling drinks and dis- 
tributed sandwiches. 

Here one saw a lusty Greek advancing, clad in a shining 
helmet, and girt about his waist only with the furs of wild 
animals ; while on his arm leaned a dark-eyed, brown-haired 
Venus, who wore nothing but stockings and satin shoes. 
As, however, the two were still able to keep their feet at 
this advanced hour, they were regarded with considerable 
respect by those who lay entirely vanquished among the 
broken bottles and remnants of the feast that strewed the 
floor. 

The ball lasted till six next morning. I don't know 
whether the ancient Greeks were in the habit of passing 
such noisy nights, but as a spectacle of colour it was un- 
doubtedly very fine. 

At six o'clock daylight appeared, and, all in their cos- 
tumes, the whole crowd of some hundreds poured out of 
the hall and made up a procession with banners and cors de 
chasse. This cortege proceeded through the somewhat de- 
serted streets and reached the Place de I'Etoile, where some 
unruly students upset a fine private brougham which was 
standing quietly there. The windows were smashed and 
the coachman was naturally furious. 

After that event about fifty gendarmes accompanied the 
procession, but this did not prevent a host of students from 
climbing aloft on the statues that grace the facade of the 
Grand Palais, where they planted their flags at evident risk 
to themselves. An unfortunate youth who was proceeding 
to business at that early hour got mixed up with some an- 
cient Greeks and fared badly, losing his hat in the struggle. 

No such procession would be tolerated in London or New 
York. A few taximetres were quickly occupied at the start 
by people in flowing robes who had fair models to escort, 
and some passing furniture vans soon found upon their 
roofs a few students, who brandished the green branches of 
trees in their hands, thus adding eclat to the scene. 

My friend Eberhardt, the sculptor, in spite of the remon- 
strance of Mistress Loretta, his friend, escaped from her 
arms and, quitting the taximetre which conveyed them 
homewards, leapt into the Seine close to Grand Palais and 
swam right across the river. Loretta was crazy about it, 
and all the fellows tried to hold him back before he plunged 
from the embankment. But he was in — he was swimming 

39 



— and soon he was out on the other side, clambering up the 
slope. Away he went dripping with water and singing at 
the top of his voice, dancing around with those of Mercier's 
atelier who had crossed the bridge to meet him! 

The whole procession now made a detour and halted in a 
fashionable quarter off the Champs Elysees, outside the 
house of Monsieur Bonnat, the Directeur of the Ecole des 
Beaux-Arts, and climbed up under his very window, hoping 
that, as on previous occasions, he would be prevailed upon 
to present himself at one of the windows of his house to 
welcome the students, make a speech, and kiss one of the 
prettiest models. But his housekeeper, who appeared at a 
window far aloft, retreated at the terrible noise and uproar, 
and closed all the shuters, and the gendarmes implored us 
to take it from them upon their word of honour that M. 
Bonnat was not there at all, being out of town. 

It was only 6.30 a.m., but by this time all the neighbouring 
residents had been aroused from their slumbers by the blow- 
ing of trumpets and the long-drawn blasts of hunting horns. 
Blinds were drawn, and they looked down — peaceable folk 
who pay high rents — upon the red and purple-robed crowd 
who danced and yelled frantically below in the misty hours 
of the morning. 

At last the procession departed and, following the course 
of the Seine, reached the Quai Malaquais, and turned into 
the courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts — that grave and 
exquisite monument which all students love, for its cool, 
fountain-besprayed courtyards, for its lovely statues, green 
lawns and gardens sacred to students only, and the gorgeous 
paintings on tiles that decorate the walls. Here the cortege 
came to a halt, and a stuffed image of some imaginary 
Enemy of Happiness was solemnly burned to ashes under a 
tall slim and stately pillar surmounted by a carved angel. 
This terminated the proceedings, and after having coffee it 
was eight o'clock in the morning and one could retire. 

For those who appreciate the original argot of the Ecole 
I give a specimen of the printed poster which announced 
the Bal des Quat'z Arts of 1908 : — 

BAL DES 4-Z ARTS. 

1908. Epoque Heroique de Sesostris et Ramses 1908 

Le Samicdi, 16 Mai. 

SALLE DU BOWLING PALACE, 12, Avenue de la 

Revoke, Neuilly-s-Seine. 

Ouverture des Fortes a 9 heures et demi. 

Fermature irrevocable a minuit. 



40 



Chapiteux, barbouilleux, boueux et burineux ! congratu- 
lez-vous d'ores et deja les mirettes a la lecture de ces hiero- 
glyphes qui s'posent la. 

Adoncques, commet dirait Rabelais s'il etait la (mais il 
n'y est pas pour le quart d'heure) adoncques avons ete 
prevenus quele i6me jour des Ides de Mai — a moins que Ton 
Herodote — dans un vaste local specialement AMENAGE 
(a Neuilly), aura lieu le N me. Bal des 4-Z Arts. Et 
comment il sera pyramidal, d'autant que TEgypte antique 
vous invite a revitir ce jour la les oripaux mirifique et 
nigrivorins de cette epoque posdeluvienne et exotique. Pour 
une fois depouillez-vous de vos fringues deguelasses et 
merdiques d'homme du monde et nippez-vous le plus archeo- 
logiquement qu'il sepuis se! Que le genie de la connerie 
inspire a vos meninges facetieuses des originalites et des 
adaptations sublimes. Entre nous, non mais la, entre nous, 
evitez de vous habiller chichement avec les laisses pour 
compte des grands loueurs de dominos et autres qui pour 
des sommes fantastiquement michees vous engoncent dans 
des casaques et accessories par trop anachronismathe- 
matiques . . . Les bougres qui auraient le culot de 
venir au bal avec des pompe-la-boue en box-calf, veau marin, 
•toile ciree, etc., seront prealablement clones au pilori du 
ridicule. C'est comme les vieux poilus, satyres, tapettes, ban- 
quiers a la manque, coulissiers, qui par brique ou pots de 
vins parviendraient a se glisser dans I'enciente sacree sous 
pretexte d'Egyptologie, mais en realite pour pincer les cu. 

. . . neiformes de nos jolies invitees, foutez moi ga, 
en broche, a coups de pied dans la boite a pots, chessez-les 
hors chez vous et vivement. 

COMME PAR HASARD, LE NU EST RIGOUR- 
EUSEMENT INTERDIT ! Cest emmerdant, mais c'est 
comme ga. 

Les Ceuss 'es qui ont de chouett's copines sont invites a 
nous les emener en foule et parfumees (not d') Osiris, rap- 
port a la couleur locale car c'est ce que prefere le Dieu RA 
comme odeur. Ne craignez pas de leur payer de bath's 
tuniques vaporeuses et gauzeuses si elles sont dans la Moise ! 
Qu'elles aient I'oel provacateur, le sourire aux levres et des 
appats hospitaliers et maniables. Recommandez-leur bien 
qu'eles nous conduisent leur petites amies midinettes ou 
non. On viendra des Medinet-Abou ! A nous les danses' 
cheres a Amon-Iris, a tons les sphinx et manitous d'Egypte. 
Si vous tombez, Mesdames, on est la pour, vous RAMES! 
Que les massiers, sous-massiers, anciens chef cochons, etc., 
incrustent dans les cervelles idiotes et retives des sales 
nouveaux, le rythme eternel de I'hymn sacro-saint du Pom- 

41 



pier. Que Thymne sacre retentisse de toute part ! A nous 
les corteges somptueux, que Tensemble du bal soit d'un efifet 
boeuf-apis! Ne soyons pas comme Sesos tristes! Bref, 
montrons aux badauds, pipelets, epiciers, gratte-papiers, 
academiciens et gens de meme acabit, que nos plaisirs et 
liesses sont d'un ordre superieur et que I'orgie, ce beau 
desordre, est un effet de Tart. Tou jours rapport a la couleur 
locale, les cigarettes "Khedive" sont specialement recom- 
mandees. Nous en s'en fout, on ne fume que le NIL. Pour 
vous mettre en train, tassez vous dans la gentle deux ou trois 
momies. . . . nettes et allez-y gaiement. Aie done, 
amusons-nous, bordel! et que les bourgeois en crevent 
d'indignation. 

A vous, nobles brutes, chers freres, joie et salut. 

LE COMITE. 



42 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE PATRON'S BANQUET. 



DIARY: June 20, 1907. 

Last night was the annual banquet of the patron of our 
ateher, M. Luc-Olivier Merson, a witty and charming old 
gentleman of about sixty, Legion of Honour, very severe in 
his criticisms in the school, but nobody in the world more 
hospitable if you visit him chez lui. The banquet was held 
in the Taverne de Pantheon, Boulevard Saint-Michel. Just 

before I arrived I met Mile. Marthe A , one of our most 

charming models. She "has" only seventeen years, and 
has such lovely brown hair and calm eyes. Of her figure 
I prefer not to speak, as in the vulgar language of the Press 
"words fail to describe." I just had time to make an ap- 
pointment with her for the following Saturday. 

On entering the tavern I found a large upper room, where 
there were all the old familiar faces, and one felt at once at 
home. They were only at the "hors d'oeuvres." 

I wore a pretty button-hole of little pink-and-white flow- 
ers, which came from the market that morning. White 
waistcoat. I was invited to read a discourse, which I had 
not written, and I began by saying that I did not know 
what it was like, and that it was quite possible it had been 
very badly written. I afterwards made a small speech of 
my own, and was greeted with "felicitations" by everyone, 
and many handshakes, and the patron got up and shook 
hands with me, having remarked to his neighbours that it 
was very "spirituelle." 

Charming dinner. We each paid Fr.5.50. 



43 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE FETE IN THE GRAND PALAIS. 



Pour le Profit des inondes du Midi. 

This fete, organised by the Automobile Club of France, 
was a great spectacular success, being patronised by^ Presi- 
dent Fallieres and his wife, with thousands of the elite of 
France as spectators. It took place in a building unrivalled 
for such spectacle — the Grand Palais, in the Avenue des 
Champs Elysees. 

As the different painting ateliers of the Ecole des Beaux- 
Arts were invited to lend their aid, by forming part of the 
cortege, and had all necessary historical costumes lent them 
gratis by the direction of the Opera Comique, I have thought 
this a fit subject for a little chapter to be included, with my 
other desultory chat about the atelier, to which I am so 
proud to belong. It was certainly a glorious evening. One 
rubbed shoulders with half the theatrical and literary world 
of Paris, in the crowded corridors of dressing-rooms. 

Each student of our atelier had the right to bring with 
him a lady. Some we mounted in front of us on snow-white 
palfreys lent us by the Opera Comique authorities. Others 
we led by the arm, and all these damsels looked so charm- 
ing in their seventeenth-century robes. 

There was no dress rehearsal. 

At half-past eight o'clock p.m. the atelier Merson, of 
which the writer forms a humble unit, began to pour in by 
the great door in the Avenue d'Antin, and promptly found 
their way into the huge dressing-room allotted to them, the 
key of which was handed to the massier by the authorities. 

Trunks and packing-cases full of costumes from the Opera 
Comique lay upon the floor. Wigs, swords, white-lace ruf- 
fles, feathered felt hats of daring and picturesque shape, 
were seized upon by students and their friends, all who had 
been permitted to enter being in a frantic hurry to possess 
themselves of the best costumes. 

One unfortunate male dresser belonging to the Opera 
Comique rushed hither and thither, tearing his hair in dis- 
traction, as sixty or a hundred voices clamoured for differ- 
ent articles of ancient wear. 

44 



Those who found no hats even borrowed from fair models 
their plume-decked head-gear, or tied a coloured cravat 
round the first battered felt hat they could snatch from a 
comrade. 

The ladies, not unused to disrobe, were as much at home 
as in the atelier, and occupied one end of the room, where 
they transformed themselves from merely pretty girls into 
angelic and fairy-like creatures, from whose black hair 
flowed white gauze veils, and over whose shoulders scarlet 
purple or dark green cloaks hung in graceful folds. 

Between nine and eleven o'clock the students passed their 
time watching the horsemen, in their glittering armour, ride 
up from the incline from the stables underneath the ground 
floor, and in making complimentary and other remarks con- 
cerning the constant stream of newcomers, who entered by 
the Avenue d'Antin — theatrical stars, graceful dancers, and 
rugged-looking warriors. 

These professionals having passed, the students' turn 
came at last, and they marched slowly forward, their pic- 
turesque van, the "Char Roman Comique," drawn by one 
horse, bringing up the rear. 

Everything that ingenuity could devise had been done to 
make their chariot worthy of the occasion. It was laden 
with cardboard sides of beef, bird cages, oil paintings, which 
were the actual work of students in the school, and which 
had been chosen for their hideousness — in fact, the chariot 
resembled a gypsies' van, which had been half-converted 
into a butcher's shop. Everybody seemed satisfied with the 
general effect. The mounted horses behaved well. They 
were ridden by those of the students who knew how to man- 
age them, each carrying in front of him a fair model, seated 
astride the steed. 

The gradual entrance of this strange and heterogeneous 
cavalcade into the vast illuminated arena, where thousands 
of the elite of France — ambassadors, statesmen, diplomats, 
poets, painters and multi-millionaires — were awaiting their 
appearance, was a thing never to be forgotten by those who 
formed part of the cavalvade. 

Here, perhaps, for the first and the last time, the students 
of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, with all their intimate camera- 
derie, their strange, secret traditions, their laughing light- 
hearted joy of life, stood displayed on this sanded floor, be- 
fore a vast public. They who so rigorously, as a rule, shut 
out the general public from the secrets of the atelier, here 
brought with them on to the scene, the very life and move- 
ment and spirit of their artistic life. 

Unable to depart from the traditions of the atelier, Bou- 

45 



det was still the impertinent buffoon that we knew so well, 
and strutted and staggered along as though he were flaunt- 
ing his independence of spirit before our eyes, and for no 
others. 

Labord, short and hideous, led the procession, arm in arm 
with the tallest student, and both were as much at home as 
if they were fooling round the studio in an idle hour. 

Pierre Boissart, the massier, curled his enormous mous- 
taches and glanced haughtily from side to side, winking be- 
tween whiles at his favourite model, with whom, later he 
disappeared behind the scenes. 

The hump-backed student, who will sing: "Pourquoi 
briser le coeur, Si plus tard il faut le regretter," till every- 
body is sick of that song, rolled his eyes fiercely, and reck- 
oned he was as good as any of the bejewelled crowd who 
were regarding him. 

The hired cripple without legs, cul-de-jatte, who, dressed 
in a gorgeous cloak and hat, propelled himself across the 
sandy arena on his lowly, four-wheeled board, pulled off the 
event bravely, and added eclat to the scene. The sand on 
the floor was so thick, however, that he found the greatest 
difEculty, with bursting muscles, in ploughing through this 
Sahara-like arena, and getting round the course. A student, 
however, armed with a long pole, pushed him forward and 
facilitated the rolling of his four wheeled board. 

There had been no dress rehearsal, yet all the great pro- 
cession when it passed before the Presidential stand seemed 
to move to some inner music, which was understood and 
felt by the atelier, though no one knew exactly the cunning 
elements of its Bohemian composition. 

From the students' point of view this fete was a great 
success, because they were free to do as they liked. Thus 
they pranced past the President's platform in great style, 
without any of that studied gesture which professional 
actors must of necessity practice. -^ 

Blum, the only American student of the atelier Merson, 
rode a fine horse, with a model clinging to his belt. Later 
in the evening, I saw him again. Blum's utterance was 
thick, but he still stuck bravely to his purpose, which was 
to land his model safe home in his — not her — dwelling place 
before break of day. 

The procession over, the students disrobed, singing and 
shouting their favourite songs, and then supped off sand- 
wiches and wine, provided from a huge hamper by the mas- 
sier. One large litre bottle of red wine to each two stuents, 
and it went down very well. 

All were then free to roam at will through the building, 

^Sn-.— .-^_- ....,_ 46 , ,. , 



and most of them remained till the close of the entertain- 
ment, witnessing several fine performances by well-known 
theatrical stars, mixing with the superb crowd that wandered 
here and there around the artificial fiery lake of magic re- 
flections, and falling water, and finaly singing in chorus, 
somewhat to the astonishment of the assembled audience, a 
favourite atelier song. Having danced to their hearts' 
content, they then departed. 

Gillot particularly wants me to mention that all the ar- 
rangements between our atelier and the management of the 
Opera Comique as to costume, car, etc., in connection with 
our procession were successfully conducted by him. 

At the conclusion of the fete a party of twenty-one stu- 
dents with their models walked through the rain and mud 
to the Halles Centrales, singing all the way. Here they 
"commanded" an upper rom in a night cafe, ordered ''Soupe 
a rOignon" for all, with bottles of white wine, and shut the 
door to all intruders. Everyone was equal to the occasion, 
and the mirth was not allowed to flag for a moment. 

Paltz having announced that we were not in a "milieu 
idiot," the ladies put themselves very much at their ease, and 
a real live model of diminutive size, but charming propor- 
tions, posed as dessert in the middle of the table. 

The supper, with songs and speeches, lasted till 4.30 a.m., 
when all dispersed for their homes. 



47 



CHAPTER VIII. 



MONSIEUR JEAN VEBER'S BAG. 



Come, come! do let's try and get these facts together 
about this bag. It's so absurdly simple when you come to 
set them down on paper. 

It all arose in this way, for I remember it as wel as if it 
had happened yesterday. 

I came over here to France after ten years' toil in Lon- 
don and had already been to St. Malo, on the Brittany coast 
once, when I decided to go again. Now I had been lucky 
enough to get entered as a student in the atelier Merson of 
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (I know — I'm coming to the bag, 
if you have patience), in the atelier Merson, and there of 
course I met Mathurin. 

Mathurin is a French student, with a limp, middle-height 
body and large, soft eyes, and a silky, soft but well-cut 
beard. No collar to speak of, as a rule but a voice loud 
enough to make up for all delinquencies and shortcomings. 

It is really a shocking thing to hear him shout at the top 
of his voice (while all the school is busy painting) and bang 
with an iron poker or the leg of a tabouret on the tole (or 
iron screen) that surrounds the stove in the said atelier. It 
makes the model wince. For the sake of good form she is 
obliged to smile, for it is a matter of etiquette that a French 
girl-model should never show surprise or fear, but the point 
is that Mathurin, in his loose, blue painting coat, came up 
to me one day and, throwing his head far back (so that his 
blue eyes looked like mild stars floating idly in a circumfer- 
ence of long hay-coloured hair) told me that a gentleman 
he knew, who was a rich artist, Jean Veber by name, wanted 
a pure-blooded Englishman to teach English to his eldest 
son, a lad of fifteen, dine in the house, go to the theatre 
sometimes, and generally make himself at home. 

Now at this time, strange to say, I had a leather bag of 
m.y own. It was one Macintosh gave me in London. 

However, I accepted the introduction and the following 
Sunday I called on M. Jean Veber — charming man — ^private 
house in the Boulevard Pereire, not far from a home for 
lost cats. 

48 



Naturally I was not thinking particularly of bags when I 
entered his house for the first time because the hall was all 
full of caricatures of celebrated people, and M. Jean Veber's 
children were running about here and there, and I was 
thinking how much, if anything at all, I ought to charge for 
being English professor to his son — and then Madame 
Veber invited me to dejeuner and we forgot the money side 
of the question. I found myself seated in a fine old-fash- 
ioned artistic room, with huge open fireplace, turtle-dove in 
cage, girl of fifteen nursing it from time to time, small bright 
eyed boy in sort of velvet suit, who looked at you with a 
glance as keen as a hawk's, and full of daring and wit. 

Monsieur Veber himself — oh, a charming man — ask all 
Paris. Old student of the Ecole, knew Merson, Cormon, 
everyone. 

Then came a day when I wanted to borrow a bag to go 
to the seaside, because Farrell never dreamt of returning 
mine when he went to England. 

It is perfectly true he left me a lot of washing, collars, 
pocket-handkerchiefs, and things. But there it is, he never 
came back, and after swearing my bag was no good to him 
at all for a flying visit, because it had no key, off he goes 
with it, having found the key inside, and that was the last 
I ever saw of him or it. 

I was in Guibout's only the other night, where Farrell 
and I dined off hors d'ceuvres and wine — several times — 
much to the horror of the waiters and the amusement of 
the assembled company. 

I always said that Guibout's gave too much for fifty cen- 
times, and that the house would go into bankruptcy. Sure 
enough, Farrell and myself were the thin end of the wedge. 
There was very Httle of the hors d'oeuvres left when we 
had finished with them, and a bill of Fr.1.20 perhaps, wine 
and all-told, looked absurd to everybody except ourselves. 

I know — the bag — I was just coming to it. 

Jean Veber said to me (in French).: "If that blackguard 
friend of yours, Farrell, has really gone off with your bag, 
my son will lend you a bag upstairs. Claude, find Mr. 
Parsons a bag to go to St. Malo. Capital, capital — an old 
wretched bag, but if Mr. Parsons will accept the loan of 
it " 

I did. 

St. Malo you know all about. Thank the Lord that's 
done for in another chapter. Half of it already printed, 
which saves me hours of toil. 

M. Veber's bag I carried away. 

Ah. Stop one moment! 

49 



When I asked M. Veber first about the bag, it was some 
days before. He said at first that he didn't know, if he had 
got one. I went away, touched cash in the "American Reg- 
ister" ofiice — (don't laugh, they're not always stony) — and 
bought a bag for nine francs in the Avenue de I'Opera. 

You may think that was a strange action on my part, 
seeing how pressed I was for money, and truly, Girard, 
who is French, told me that I had been swindled, and that 
such a bag came apart in the wet weather. 

Tant pis. It was bought and I took it home. 

Then— not before — I called on Veber's again, and didn't 
mention the bag, but his son came rushing downstairs with 
it and said, "The bag, Mr. Parsons! here it is." Madame 
Veber smiled so kindly that of course I took it away that 
afternoon without saying that I had bought one the day 
before. It would have been a sort of insult to their kind- 
ness. But as I went homewards by the Gare St. Lazare I 
took M. Veber's empty bag to the Left Luggage Ofiice and 
put it in. I made sure I should take it out when I came 
back from St. Malo in a fortnight. The other bag was 
already packed, and I only just had time to catch jny train 
for Brittany as it was. 

Thus it was that M. Veber's bag was left in storage at 
Gare St. Lazare, and I went to St. Malo with the new one 
I had bought. 

When I returned in three weeks' time I found there was 
twelve or fifteen francs to pay on Veber's bag, and being 
broke could not. I left it there for six months. The bill 
for its storage had now assumed staggering proportions ; 
and at the end of January, 1908, I went to see the Director 
of the Gare St. Lazare, who said as I had written and 
printed articles mentioning seaside places on their line, he 
would give me an order to have Veber's bag out for noth- 
ing. 



Since then I have been running about to all sorts of differ- 
ent addresses with the letter he gave me, but I am always 
referred further on, and the two aged men in uniform 
down in the Magasin des Colis en Souffrance at Batignolles 
admit that Veber's bag is there, locked up. But they really 
don't dare to take it out. They want more ofiicial signa- 
tures and reference numbers and orders. And each time 
I go, the cat who is in charge in the vast lumber room or 
storehouse looks up at me as if to say: 

"Nothing doing, sir. You can't have it." 

It is all sunshine between vast shadows in therie, and lost 

SO 



bedsteads lying next to forsaken tanks, cases of Australian 
apples, dust-laden umbrellas, and other people's hand-bags. 
What that cat has to look after ! And all these things have 
been lost and forgotten, and shippers are wondering where 
they are, and consignees in distant countries are wringing 
their hands in grief, for parcels which have never and will 
never come to hand. There they lie, with Veber's bag 
amongst them, in this great emporium of ''Colis en Souf- 
f ranees," in the yard adjoining the Batignolles Station. 
And the cat basks on them and yawns. 

At last, after being reefrred to No. 17, Rue d' Amster- 
dam, which is quite close to my home, miles away from 
Batignolles, I found another department of the Gare St. 
Lazare Offices, and saw a very kindly! manager, who 
glanced at the document that the first Director had given 
me, and drew up another document; and when I called 
the next day he showed me the draft of a letter which re- 
quired signature ; and the third time I called to see him the 
signature was appended, and with this letter I went down 
to Batignolles and they fished out M. Veber's empty bag 
from among a pile in a vast hall and I went away with it. 

Here the curtain falls on the last act of the drama of the 
"Missing Bag." 

COPY. CHEMIN DE FER DE L'OUEST. 

EXPLOITATION. 
Paris, 4 Fevrier, 1908. 
Monsieur le Chef de Gare, BATIGNOLLES. 
REFERENCE DR. 13288 R.2. 
J'ai I'honneur de vous prier de vouloir bien faire livrer 
franco au porteur de la presente, une valise ayant faite 
I'objet du Deposit No. 30730 du 30 Juin de I'avis St. La- 
zare, colis entre au magasin sous le No. 91 12. 

Vous voudriez bien me faire connaitre la date et la — 
(illegible) de la livraison. 

Monsieur Parsons a remise le bulletin de Deposit refer- 
ant au dit colis. 

(Signe) 
LE CHEF DU SERVICE COMMERCIAL. 



Shortly after this, the Chemin de Fer de I'Ouest went 
smash. 

DIARY: Feb. 29, 1908. 

Last summer, when all the apples were ripe, I went down 
to Chauvry-par-Monsoult, missing the right direction at 

_._-.. 51 , ^ _ , \ 



first and alighting at a little station where a bird sang by 
the line. It was probably a lark and there were flowers of 
all sorts of colours in the grass beneath it which accounted 
for its glee. 

It was evidently full summer time outside Paris, and the 
year just dipping towards autumn. When I got down at 
length at the right station, I found there were five kilo- 
metres of walking to be done to arrive at the village of 
Chauvry-par-Monsoult, so I had a glass in the cafe by the 
station and went out along the country road, filling my 
pockets with ripe apples under the trees by the cornfields. 

So at last I came to Chauvry, with its small and ancient 
church, and found Monsieur Jean Veber's house, and be- 
hold he himself was ill. There he lay in the best bedroom 
of his country house, which was a rambling, old-fashioned 
place, with a rambling garden out behind for the children 
to play in. The cocks crowed loudly in the adjoining farm, 
which was built on a lavish scale with huge thatched barns 
and a sleepy look about it. 

Veber was drawing one of his amusing pictures on the 
stone, which was propped up on a frame over the bed. He 
had broken his leg falling off a horse. I should have been 
rather proud of such an event, because I neither own a 
horse nor hire one except very occasionally. But Veber 
said to me: 

"No, do not put it that way in the 'Herald.' I don't want 
people to think that I was thrown from a horse, as I have 
some natural vanity. If you are going to write it up, make 
it an automobile accident." 

So in it went as follows: 

New York Herald, Paris edition. Septem- 
ber loth, 1907. Tuesday. 
M. JEAN VEBER HURT. 
"Thrown from Auto, He is Laid Up / 

with Broken Leg in Chauvry 
Village. 



"M. Jean Veber, the well-known French artist, who is 
taking his vacation with his family at Chauvry-par-Mousoult 
— a quiet village five kilometres from the station de Mon- 
soult (Seine-et-Oise) — has had the misfortune to break his 
leg between the knee and ankle, as the result of an auto- 
mobile accident. The 'chauffeur,' turning a sharp corner, 
came suddenly on a flock of sheep. Putting on the brakes, 
he stopped the auto so abruptly that M. Veber was thrown 
out with such violence that his leg was broken. 

"He now passes his days lying quietly by the open win- 

52 



dow which overlooks a wilderness of tangled flowers and 
fruit trees. He expects that the outlook will be unchanged 
till the end of September. He divides his time between 
reading biography and following the career of Fluffy 
Ruffles." 



Veber was thoroughly pleased. I passed the rest of the 
afternoon up in a tree with his son in the rambling garden. 
They had made a ladder that led up to the higher branches, 
and there was a sort of plank balcony where you sat up in 
a perfect forest of green foliage and ate cherries up there, 
with a book written by M. Veber's brother, the dramatist. 

When I came out of that tree — because the trap was 
ready to take me to the station — I descended mentally from 
Heaven into — well, I can't call Paris hell, can I? 

Now, flowers of the country-side, sleeping under twi- 
light skies — anemone, lilac, wild rose, and thou — spirited 
poppy — have ye power upon the hour — can the charm of 
your frail petals and faint perfume fight the city's feverish 
breath ? 

But it was always equally delicious in Monsieur Veber's 
town house. All houses with well-trained pretty children 
in them are homes. And this great salle-a-manger, with its 
white walls hung with lovely oil-paintings, enormous open 
chimney-place, comfortable chairs, and shadowy perspective 
views down the long wide corridor that led to the salon — 
all this was home, in the evening hours by lamplight. 

Then, like a holy apparition, came slowly down the old 
oak staircase, the very embodiment of saintly age — Mon- 
sieur Veber's mother. Her trembling hands and snow- 
white hair seemed to command that respect which, even in 
an age of automobiles and underground electric traction, 
may still be found reserved for honourable age, in homes 
from which the loud, insistent voices of the world are well 
excluded. 

DIARY: A "VEBER" ART EXHIBITION. 

At the Galeries Georges Petit, 8, Rue de Zeze, an exhi- 
bition of paintings, drawings, and sculpture by the mem- 
bers of the new society entitled "La Comedie Humaine" 
will be opened to-day at half-past two o'clock. 

This exhibition, which invited exhibits from English and 
American artists, will in future be held annually, and has 
been organised by M. Arsene Alexandre, who acts as presi- 
dent. 

The following are the names of some of the caricaturists 
who are exhibiting their work: — 

53 



MM. Cecil Aldin, Brissaud, Cadel, Cappiello, Caran 
d'Ache, Dejean, Dethomas, Devambez, Abel Faivre, Fo- 
rain, Gousse, Albert Guillaume, Hermann- Paul, Israels, 
Jeanniot, Leandre, De Losques, Loysel, de Mathan, Nau- 
din, Perelmagne, Raffaelli, Steinlen, Trigoulet, JEAN 
VEBER, Vogel, Wely, Willette, etc. 

With such names to conjure with, visitors to these Gal- 
leries may feel assured of finding plenty of amusement to 
chase away the gloom of December. The exhibition closes 
on the 31st of this month. 

Special permission was granted me to stroll round the 
Galleries on Sunday morning, when the pictures were being 
arranged. 

It certainly is a most refreshing exhibition, after the 
heavy, ornate, and impressionistic styles met with in most 
galleries. In the hall one meets with the agreeable compo- 
sitions of Abel Faivre, in charcoal and water-colour. 

The painting which will probably attract most attention 
is that by M. Jean Veber, entitled "Le Jeu," showing a 
crowd of fashionable gamblers seated around the tables at 
Monte Carlo. This picture has a history. When first ex- 
hibited it attracted general attention in the Salon. It was 
hung in company with five other paintings by the same 
artist. So tempting was this corner of the Salon that a 
barrier had to be erected in front of M. Veber's exhibits 
to prevent the crowds of visitors who pressed in front 
from carrying them bodily off the walls. But "Le 
Jeu" scored a particular success. Indeed, several 
of those depicted in the painting, including a Spanish 
Duke, actually wanted to fight duels with the artist, because 
they found their portraits too realistic, and objected to be 
seen in company with some of the celebrated demi-mon- 
daines who play at these tables. About the only person 
who did not talk of sending "her" seconds round was the 
stout elderly lady seated in the centre of the picture, and 
whose terribly fish-grey octopus eyes seemed to have grown 
stone cold in the process of making money at the tables. 
Yet the portraits which this picture contains were all painted 
from memory, M. Veber finding it inadvisable, and even 
impossible — owing to the rules of the establishment — ^to 
make even rough sketches while play was actually proceed- 
ing. M. Veber has trained his mind to such a point of per- 
fection that he can carry away in his memory a perfect set 
of likenesses.^ He then sits down at home and works and 
elaborate at his ease, and the result is that wonderful series 
of caricatures, grotesque yet never vulgar, which make a 



sure and urgent appeal to the sense of humor of all true 
Parisians. 

Let us now look for a moment at another painting by 
M. Jean Veber. This is entiled "L'Envie." Here three 
men without legs appear to be fascinated by a young girl 
who goes down the road. She has very short skirts ; and 
from the humble point of view of these critical "cul-de- 
jattes/' mounted as they are, only upon wooden boards fixed 
to the stumps of their legs, she appears especially attrac- 
tive. Nor does their attention seem to be disagreeable to 
her, as she is smiling straight in front of her. 

In another corner of the same room a picture by M. A. 
Devambez, called "I'Homme Orchestre," shows a view, 
taken from on high, of a snow-covered street. Far down 
below, a man burdened with all the paraphernalia of his 
"art," including drum, dog led by chains, etc., passes in the 
night, followed by a troop of running children. 

M. Jeanniot shows "Les Voyageurs" — three passengers, 
including a lady, asleep in a railway carriage, in a nice grey 
light, making a most mysterious and cosy interior. 

M. E. Trigoulet shows a picture entitled "Soiree Bour- 
geoise" — an after-dinner scene, where there are a collection 
of human monstrosities, tall, short, and ugly, which would 
certainly have a bad effect on anybody's digestion. 

All the nude figures by M. Alb. Guillaume are delicate 
in colour. We are shown "Le Reveil," where a young lady 
is getting up in the morning, and "Le Coucher," where she 
is yawning because it is bedtime. 

"La Douche," by the same artist, represents a charming 
young lady who is far from thin, being sprayed with cold 
water from a long pipe by a man in an apron who looks 
like a concierge, while the latter's wife stands by holding 
up a sheet to keep herself from getting wet. 

Madame Lafitte Desirat has at least ten fantastic and 
delicious little ladies in wax, beautifully dressed, one for 
dinner, the other in a tea-gown ; one as a simple midinette 
with a bandbox, another arranging the new gown which 
her fashionable mistress is trying on ; and last, but not least, 
a lady in complete automobile costume. 

Then we have "Le Cireur de I'hotel de Cheval blanc," a 
painting by M. Raffaelli. With his blacking brush poised 
in his hand, the bootblack stands amidst twenty pairs of 
uncleaned boots, in an attitude which says: "Look here, 
do you call this one man's work?" 

Jean Veber shows "Le Plaisir" — where a fat man in 
evening dress, with his straw hat lying beside him, is seated 
at a low table out on the balcony of a hotel, talking to a 

..-.-. 55 



very nice young lady, who seems to be thinking about the 
state of her finances, judging from the careful and guarded 
expression she wears. The fat man is drinking beer, and 
the young lady tea. Outside — the black night. 

M. Pierre Brissaud shows "Le Repos apres le berloque" 
— a charming water-colour. A regiment of French soldiers 
lying on a bank under green trees, through which the sun 
filters. Beyond, in the burning sunshine, stretches the plain 
of cornfields with scattered trees. The shadows and sun- 
light on the dark-blue jackets of the soldiers are cleverly 
arranged. 

Not far from this picture we meet again with the inde- 
fatigable A. Guillaume, who shows a young lady telephon- 
ing in bed. All his ladies are either in bed or getting out 
of bed, but this one is certainly charming. 

We find in one corner of the same room quite a collec- 
tion of pictures by M. A. Willette, including a ''Bebe Bour- 
reau" — a nude child holding a tall, struggling white cat by 
the edge of a tub of very blue water. The cat is evidently 
making up its mind to the worst. 

A panel of four oil paintings is by the same artist. *'Cen- 
drillon" depicts a plump and beautiful lady walking down 
a flight of steps from a fiery castle in the night. She leaves 
her satin slipper behind her on the ground, showing a very 
neat, bare ankle and foot. 

M. Jean Veber (who, by the way, exhibits no less than 
fifteen pictures) is met with everywhere. He has a lady in 
a leopard's den, entitled "La Dompteuse." One leopard 
has climbed up on the bars of the cage. Another is biting 
savagely at the stick which the lady tamer (who, curiously 
enough, wears spectacles and a black, low-necked dress) is 
pointing at him. Outside the cage a huge crowd of on- 
lookers are well depicted in a haze of electric light. 

M. H. Dezire shows a wounded white horse being 
dragged into the ambulance van in the street, with the usual 
crowd standing around. 

M. Hermann Vogel's horrible pictures of men with the 
heads of skeletons, representing death introduced into vari- 
ous restaurants, homes, and other cheerful haunts, will 
again attract attention. 

Mr. Cecil Alden will represent British artists in four 
humorous paintings entitled "The Witch," 'The Meet of 
the Harriers," "Jumping Powder," and "Going, Going, 
Gone." 

In conclusion, this exhibition boasts, according to the 
printed catalogue, that "elle comprend des ceuvres de tous 

5fl 



les artistes qui ont triomphe dans la g-aite, la grace, Tironie 
ou las atire, et qui, par leur observation amere ou enjouee, 
ont extrait de la vie: — 

"Une ample comedie en cent tableaux divers, 
Et dont la scene est I'univers." 



57 



CHAPTER IX. 



OUR MONASTERIAL HOTEL. 



(I) 

One night down on the ''Herald" I passed in this little 
description as a cable-note and duly touched my five francs 
for the same: — 

Extract from the "New York Herald," Sunday, 
August 1 8, 19 — . 

The Hotel Canadian and Colonial, in the Rue de St. Peters- 
bourg, Paris, which belonged three years ago to the monks of 
the Sacre Coeur and was founded by a religious sect, the Oblats, 
has just been put up for sale at public auction, owing to the 
separation of Church and State. It has a large shady garden, 
with two great chapels on each side. 

The Credit^ Foncier bought in the whole estate and resold it 
to the Societe des Immeubles Parisiennes, which resold the finer 
of the two empty chapels to the Archbishop of Paris, who opens 
it for public worship next October. 

The other large chapel will l3e converted into a concert hall 
with six English billiard tables. The main part of the ancient 
monastery is now run as an hotel. A small Gothic chapel off 
the hall, with coloured windows and vaulted roof, is used as a 
salle-a-manger. The State owned a large sum to the Credit 
Foncier, so not a single penny of profit has fallen to the Gov- 
ernment over the transaction and the monks triumph over the 
hertics. The "Canadian" will be the only hotel in Paris where 
good Catholic guests can go to mass straight from their private 
rooms, as there is a side door leading to the sacred building. .^ 

High up is our hotel; not half-way up the heights of 
Montmartre — but still almost as high as Place Clichy. Those 
poor monks — I feel for them every day. What a tug it 
must have been to leave their peaceful, holy monastery, 
with its graceful chapels, well-stocked libraries, enormous 
rambling subterranean kitchen, and cellars stocked with 
precious wine and golden liqueurs ! 

Some little time ago I moved into this beautiful, large 
room overlooking the garden — this large room which is so 
nice and quiet and stately-like. 

Some times I wake in the morning and say to myself, 

S8 



"No! I won't get up yet to go to the Art School. I will 
just lie here idle and look out of the window. The sun is 
streaming in like gold. One half of the shutters is closed 
and the blue sky shines through the slits ; and down there 
are the tall tops of the trees, bright green in the garden. 

''No, I won't get up just yet; for getting up means trou- 
ble and squabbles and expense and carrying paints about. 
Besides — is it worth it? 

"Better to lie here and watch the sun and the shadow on 
the mahogany boards and dream of the monks who once 
lived here in all piety and prayerfulness." 

I meant to rise — yes — very early — somewhere about six 
o'clock, wasn't it? 

But the sunlight on the boards of my room did it. It all 
looked so very sleepy and quiet and fresh and beautiful. 

I will lie here just a minute more. For the mornings are 
cool and the swallows make a wise whistling music in the 
air and, although the window is wide open, the sins of the 
world are shut out for a little while. 

Why, look here, I drop fast asleep — and when I really 
wake 'tis ten o'clock. And I toddle down just in time for 
coffee and the office, with all the French, English, and 
American papers to read. I neevr got up early after all. 

TWILIGHT. 

Come out in the garden awhile and look up and aloft. 

That's my room, that you see right up yonder, shining 
like a beacon in a sweet wilderness of grey walls — ^because 
I left my lamp burning just now. 

My window is generally open, for I love, in the Spring, 
to hear a flash of swallows' song and a rush of swallows' 
wing go by my room. 

And in the summer I watch the people in the houses a 
quarter or even half a mile away, sitting in their balconies, 
like people in the tiers of seats at an opera, looking out over 
our great garden and the gardens that lie between them and 
ourselves. 

The day's work is done and you can tell it from their 
attitude one and all. There are girls who move slowly to 
the windows and come out on the beautiful ramshackle 
balconies far off yonder up against the sky and down by 
the gardens and the courtyards at the backs of their distant 
houses. 

Then they lean their elbows on the handrail and look 
over, meditative and pretty. 



59 



DAWN. 

Once I came home very tired from the "Mail" offices 
in the Rue du Sentier — it was the time of the San Fran- 
cisco disaster and there had been extra calls from London 
over the telephone — five or six columns to take down in 
shorthand dictated direct from Carmelite House to the 
stuffy little telephone box where I was cooped up — I ar- 
rived home about five a.m. 

Glory, what a sunrise! I could scarcely drag" my foot- 
steps up to the fifth floor of our dear old monastery. All 
the world was asleep. I was wet and limp with fatigue. 
One does not grow fat on the "Mail" or take cabs home 
every night. 

But when I reached my room I just flung open my win- 
dow and looked down on the garden where the birds were 
waking and then up in the sky where the dawn was break- 
ing. 

There came a wind from the east, with the glowing of 
the light and the growing of the day. And this wind played 
flute notes in the trees and one or two birds made then a 
quiet harmony. 

'Twas all the world like a young girl awaking from a 
dream and throwing off one by one her lacy robes of night 
and looking round with blushes at the day. 

ERNEST, THE HEAD WAITER. 

I must just give a few lines to Ernest, if he will accept 
them. He belonged to the old regime. This stout and 
handsome "gargon" must have been aged about forty-five 
or fifty, though when first I met him in our hotel he had 
just had the luck to marry quite a young girl, and they had 
a small baby. 

He painted surprisingly well in oils, so we were friepds 
at once and he talked of making me a special price for 
dinners and petit dejeuner in the hotel. 

It was difficult not to imagine that he was really the 
manager of the hotel. And the unfortunate way he came 
to leave the hotel only proves once more that great and 
open-hearted natures will have their fling and the iron bars 
of tyranny must burst. For I regret to say that Ernest, in 
a moment of pride and exaltation, struck Monsieur Benoit, 
the manager, on the head and so was dismissed from our 
magnificent hotel. 

I was fearfully disappointed. I shall never forget coming 
down to petit dejeuner in the morning and being greeted — 
as I entered the lofty vaulted salle-a-manger — with a 

60 



clarion-toned thunderous voice, which sang out, as a hearty 
skipper might yell his word of command in the din of a 
sea-storm : 

"Well, old boy ! Good-morning! How are you? That's 
right! Where will you sit? Here by the window." 

Then, going to the lift, he would yell down to the cook 
in the kitchen below, in stentorian tones : 

"Cafe au lait — un — et bien Chaud!" and enter into con- 
versation with me about the pictures in the Salon, or the 
Luxembourg, and the painting he was doing at home and 
which he would offer to show me. 

THE MARQUIS. 

One day when I went down to breakfast in the old times 
— (when Ernest, the enormous gargon, lorded it in the 
lovely chapel which was our salle-a-manger) — a tall grave 
man with an almost white beard and a beautiful kindly 
smile, like a knight in Tennyson's "Round Table" might 
wear, came into the sunlit room. 

He was limping slightly and his great height and propor- 
tionate breadth made this the more conspicuous. 

He went over to a table near the open window, which 
gives on the garden — it was then springtime — and sat 
down. 

I noticed he was addressed with considerable courtesy 
by Ernest, the all-familiar gargon. 

I was eating reine-claudes with a large spoon and enjoy- 
ing a wonderful display of cobalt and purple colours in 
long splashes of light, on the white stone walls, and the 
tremble of the leaves on the sunlit trees in the garden, and 
the magnificent and mysterious charm of this chapel which, 
by a turn of the wheel of Fate, has become converted into 
a salle-a-manger. 

Soon I learnt that the tall gentleman who limped was the 
Marquis d'Albizzi, an Italian by birth. He spoke seven or 
eight languages and wrote them equally well. Decorated 
by his own country he was also a member of the Royal 
Geographical Society. 

Madame Benoit seemed horrified that an acquaintance 
should spring up between this courtly Marquis, who occu- 
pied a suite of the best roms on the first floor, and myself, 
who was paying ten francs a week on the fifth. 

With what gentle grace this philosopher, who was so 
much my senior in years and wisdom, approached me I 
shall never forget. 

His dignity seemed to melt away in a sense of the com- 

6i 



radeship of letters. Could I get a little article of his printed 
in the English paper I worked for ? It would please him so 
much, whether it was paid for or not, to see himself in 
print in a language that was not his own. And he showed 
me the graceful and delicate stories which he had written 
and published in the French papers. 

And then, when I tried to translate my Wellman article 
into French, he would come and sit down at the breakfast 
table (petit dejeuner — only brown bread, coffee, and reine- 
claudes) and work at it with me for hours — till gradually 
its clumsiness fell from it and it evolved into a graceful 
French article, quite "Figaro" style. 

Oh happy companionship of letters — brief glimpse into 
the joys of the life of a leisured man who has literary in- 
stincts, who has traveled throughout the world, visited 
every capital in Europe, chatted intimately with crowned 
heads, been entrusted with difficult and honourable mis- 
sions — what a masterpiece of tact was this great man, who 
came stepping towards me slowly on a spring morning, with 
the smile of friendship and the hand-grasp of a fellow- 
workman ! 

• • • m * •' - • 

OLD NOTE FROM MY DIARY: September 27, 1906. 

Marquis d'Albizzi (Italian by birth, but speaks all lan- 
guages) is back in the hotel again. Big, mild, delicious- 
mannered man, wearing ribbon of Legion of Honour, came 
across and chatted to me at breakfast. Possesses gift of 
putting idiots at their ease. 

• • ■ • • • • 

MARTHE (the Loveliest Model). 

Sometimes Marthe, the most beautiful model, comes to 
visit me in the hotel. 

Hasten, hasten, Marthe! Enter the Monasterial Hotel 
by the other doorway where the flowerwoman stands. This 
is a door which really was built to give entrance to the 
great Chapel now used as a concert hall. But it so happens 
that there is a side door leading into the hotel itself. And 
in the passage under the arched doorway, and in a little 
room behind it, a nice Frenchwoman sells roses and all the 
other flowers which she brings straight from the Halles 
Centrales early in the morning. She is allowed to rent this 
room and she lives in the hotel. Strange arrangement. 

Through this flowery entrance Marthe, the pretty model 
(whom I have sketched often, in all sorts of costumes, and 
without any at all), can safely enter our hotel without being 

62 



remarked by the proprietor or his wife. She climbs now 
with me the secret side staircase which the monks probably 
used for similar purposes. 

Silently and swiftly we ascend, till all the five floors are 
beneath us. I hear always the steady soft rustling of her 
skirts, a tempting sound. 

At last ! We are in my room now ; and alone together. 

Now, you Sweet ! kiss me to the music of the swallows. 
• •••••• 

TOM THE GUIDE. 

Tom the Guide ! I was almost forgetting him. He sold 
good tea very cheap and lived in our hotel in some mysteri- 
ous capacity. 

They called him a guide, and certainly he guided one 
very readily into any cafe where "rhum-eau-de-seltz" was 
to be had. 

An Irishman by birth, according to his own account, and 
moreover a cousin of Lord Charles Beresford (he told me 
this quite solemnly and I simply put it down as he said it, 
though I have a brother in the Royal Navy) he was a thor- 
ough sport, could quote Shakespeare by the metre, and 
was favourably known to all the police of Paris. Speaking 
French and a little German, he managed to pick up a living. 
But he talked of prosperous bygone days — first when he 
was in the 15th Lancers — and afterwards as a private gen- 
tleman of mysterious independent means in Paris, driving 
his own carriage and dining in the Cafe de Paris and 
Maxim's. 

At last — and this is the point — Tom landed up at our 
hotel, in the time when Benoit ran it, filling it with anybody 
at any price, and Madame Benoit took a fancy to him, 
finding him honest, and left him in charge of the hotel 
office at night-time, with a telephone to look after, about 
one hundred pigeon-holes for clients' letters, a huge safe, 
a folding desk, an easy chair, and a large bottle of red wine 
for himself. 

Here Tom was at his best, for he really felt himself in 
charge — of an enormous hotel — at night-time. 

"Seventy years of age, sir, and look at that!" he would 
say, showing his sword arm which was somewhat withered. 

And after he had had a good lot of wine he became in- 
sulting. But Madame Benoit was always on his side, so 
he sailed before the wind out of all difficulties and our 
hotel was his harbourage. 

Of course he went down to meet the trains at Gare St. 
Lazare, and equally, of course, he captured fluttering and 

63 



undecided passengers (especially ladies — Tom was awfully 
sweet to the ladies) and led them reluctantly into a cab 
waiting close outside and took them up to our hotel and 
assured them it was the one they were looking for. 

Very often, no doubt, they wanted the Hotel St. Peters- 
bourg. But it was perfectly easy for Tom the Guide to 
explain to them that our hotel, the Hotel Canadian, stood 
in the Rue de Saint Petersbourg, and that was what th^y 
must mean. 

Whether they meant it or not they had to come along 
with their luggage, for they couldn't speak a word of French 
as a rule and so they fell, an easy prey, into our hotel and 
settled there, while Tom touched a commission on all they 
ate and drank. 

Tom's scheme was to tell them to go straight in and have 
a good dinner and to keep on having dinners and to have 
a fire in their room, petit dejeuner sent up, and burn as 
many candles as they liked, and at both ends if they wished 
to. Tom represnted the hotel to them as a sort of Liberty 
Hall. 

And so, strangely enough, it actually was for a time ; for, 
though I could never understand the extraordinary reason, 
Madame Benoit seemed to have a horror of presenting a 
bill. Perhaps she was as afraid of it as the customers were 
when they saw it. Some went black in the face when the 
bill was presented, said nothing, but fled by night, even leav- 
ing, like Joseph, their raiment behind them ! 

Not that I want to compare Madame Benoit to Potiphar's 
wife for a moment. I ne'^er heard her seducing a young 
man, though she was a fine, tall^ handsome woman, and 
Tom often called her "his darling." She would give him a 
playful smack for this freedom of speech. Certainly she 
was very handsome in her violet dressing-gown of a morn- 
ing. Handsome and cruel. "A powerful woman, that." I 
often thus described her to Tom and other friends, with a 
sort of respect mingled with fear. 

She had no idea how to run an hotel. Nor had her hus- 
band. He was all for dogs, a gun, and two weeks' shooting 
in the country. Brought back an excellent bag of game and 
listened unmoved to Madame's woeful tales of runaway 
guests, such as the man who fled in his own motor-car 
when his bill was sent up one morning. 

As for Monsieur Benoit, he cared nothing for the hotel. 
If I spoke to him, asking him for some alteration in the 
arrangement of my room, etc., he never seemed to hear it, 
so I just got the servants to do it at once. They would do 
anything if you tipped them. I have heard of guests who 

64 



lived comfortably in the hotel without paying their bill for 
two months, simply by judicious tips distributed to the ser- 
vants. 

Tom was much the same. If you gave him a two-franc 
piece he would invent the most ingenious stories by which 
to appease Madame when she finally clamoured for settle- 
ment of a long bill. 



"I'm the interrupter, and interruptions assist good speak- 
ers!" 

Tom, the official interpreter of the hotel, is talking. He 
strokes his beard rather nervously with a long thin hand 
and looks at you with mock-solemn eyes. 

He draws in his breath very rapidly after bringing out 
one of his best witticisms : 

''Now — where have you been to-night, sir ! Answer my 
questions categorically, unequivocally, and — without pre- 
varication." 

"Good-night, Tom; I decline to give an account of my- 
self." 

Talking about the sea, Tom said one night: 

"Yes, my happiest days were spent on the sea." 

"There's something sympathetic about the sea," I replied. 

Tom: "Hoch! If you get a good ctaptain. Did I ever 

tell you about Captain John X- ? He and I were like 

chums. Arrived at Barcelona (where we had to lay off) 
I says to the captain: 'Let's go ashore to a sing-song place 
somewhere.' 

"'All right, sir!' We go into a sing-song place and I 
says: 

" 'This is a peseta each ; and you get a glass of black 
wine.' 

"So we sat down. We have two glasses. And in comes 
a girl — an English girl that was singing — I didn't know the 
programme or anything. So she began: 

" 'Oh ! Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan — Jonathan, Jona- 
than, John!' 

"He said: 'Look here, you old devil, you brought me in 
here on purpose — how the h — 11 does that girl know that 
my name is John?' 

"He thought I had done it on purpose. So I beckoned 
her. She said: 'The song was on the programme.' 'You 
know, this is my captain,' I said. 'He thinks you are in- 
sulting him.' 

"He brought her on board. 'By Gad,' he said to me 
next day, *she was a handsome girl !' 



65 



"By the way, did you ever know Taggen Rock in the 
Sea of Ozoff, in Russia? But we lay twenty-two miles 
from shore. There's a tug comes down once a day and 
goes back once a day. 

"When we got into Gibraltar the Old Man says to me: 
'Now/ he says, 'Steward!' — (always, of course, mighty 
regimental when the mates and all were all there) — 'Now, 
Steward, if you want to sell your empty beef barrels — ^be- 
cause empty beef barrels always belong to the chief steward 
— Now is the time to sell them — in Gibraltar. They give 
you two and a half francs for each barrel.' 'Well,' I said, 
'I've got nineteen.' He said, 'I will tell the ship's chandler 
to come and fetch them.' 

"We went back again to Odessa. I said, "How much a 
lb. beef?' Three-halfpence for half-a-pound.' 

"I said, 'Where are we bound for?' 

" 'Taggen Rock,' he said. 

"I said, 'That will do for me.' I said, 'Are you going 
ashore ?' 

"He said, 'Yes.' 

"Well,' I said, 'look here, I want to go ashore with you.' 
But he said, Tm not going to hear any songs about "Jona- 
than"?' 

"I said, 'No, it doesn't make any difference. Send me 
down four carcasses.' 

"He said, 'What are you going to do ?' 

"I said, 'I also want two hundredweight of salt.' I said, 
'Will you do that or — I will go with you.' 

"I had an old pilot there and I had all the boys there to 
cut it up. 'Now is there anyone here not feeling fit or 
sound?' 

"We had one man there. I said, 'That's all right. You 
shall have all you want to eat, but don't you touch it.' I 
made nineten barrels of beef. I gave the carpenter Frs.20 
to batten it. We went back again to Odessa. We had 300 
bullocks, 1,500 chickens, and sixteen or seventeen horses. 
You ask me was this Noah's Ark. No, sir. Don't inter- 
rupt. We went to Savona, in Italy. There the captain of 
a ship named 'Huntsman' came in. He said: 

"What lovely beef you've got. I have never had such 
corned beef in my life!" 

" 'I made it, sir,' I said. 

"'What?' he said. 

"I said, 'How many barrels do you want?' 

"Barrels???' he said. 

"I said, 'What do you pay for your beef per barrel?' I 

66 



said, 'You can have five barrels for £20 and pay the cap- 
tain.' 

"I bought that beef (hushed voice) at three sous ! — three- 
halfpence a pound. 

"I said to our captain, 'That's better than hearing the 
girls sing, "Oh, Jonathan." 

" 'Now,' I said to him, 'you can have the other beef for 
£2.' 

"Thirty-six pounds (sterling) I made." 



"It doesn't matter to me if you are cousin to Kitchener !" 
said Tom to Farrell one day. "I'm godfather to Sir Archi- 
bald Hunter." 

"And I am,'^ he insisted, when I challenged him for an 
explanation. 



67 



CHAPTER X. 



OUR MONASTERIAL HOTEL CHANGES ITS NAME. 



Becomes the Hotel Windsor, under the patronage of a 
German, Walter Herrlau, formerly manager of the 
Hotel St. Petersbourg, Paris. 

One night I invited Burlingham to dine in our hotel. He 
wrote the following: 

Extract from the "New York Herald/' Thursday, 
February 20, 1908: 

"Mr. Walter Herrlau, some time manager of the Hotel Saint 
Petersbourg in Paris, has just taken control of what is probably 
the oldest hotel in France. He has leased the old Oblat monas- 
tery at 26, Rue de Saint Petersbourg and is now at work turn- 
ing it into a modern hotel, to be called the Hotel Windsor. 
All of the quaint architecture and historic halls are to be pre- 
served, but one of the chapels is to be turned into a dining 
salon, while the second chapel, purchased by Cardinal Richard 
shortly before his death, is to be used for church services. 
Visitors at the hotel, therefore, will be able to go to church 
without leaving the building. 

"That a monastery should be turned into an hotel catering 
to American tourists is due to the separation of Church arid 
State in France. 7 am forced to make a few changes, such as 
putting in an elevator and a number of bathrooms,' said Mr. 
Herrlau yesterday to a 'Herald' correspondent, 'but it would 
be sacrilege to change the Gothic designs and stained glass win- 
dows in the high ceilinged rooms. What I want is to run an 
absolutely first-class hotel, affording at the same time the illu- 
sion of life in a quiet, quaint monastery. The central position 
of the hotel is sure to bring success to the venture. 

"In rearranging the hotel, which is now open for visitors, 
strange books and pamphlets left behind by the monks in their 
hasty retreat have been discovered. When the monastery was 
put up at public auction it was bought in by the Credit Fonder, 
who resold it to the Societe des Immeubles Parisiens. For a 
short time it was used as an hotel under the name of the 
Canadian and Colonial Hotel. Last summer there was some 
talk of using one of the chapels as a concert and billiard hall. 
But this shocked devout Catholics and the scheme was aban- 
doned and dinners will be served ^ there instead. The monks' 
refectory is to be left intact with its great open fireplace. One 
charming thing about the hotel and its site is its large garden. 
Mr. Herrlau says he intends to use this in summer for open- 
air meals." 



68 



Our dear old Monasterial Hotel is chang-ed in a flash un- 
der the new German manager. Geo. Herrlau is like a 
magician— an evil one, I was tempted to add, for I lost my 
room with the garden view three weeks after he arrived. 

One day scaffolding covered the entire face of the build- 
ing. Then workmen scraped the whole of the hotel down 
from top to bottom. A wicked noise it made of an early 
morning. 

But from being a dull grey colour the hotel was now 
suddenly changed into sparkling white. 

And Tom the Guide was driven from his room on the 
top floor into the very streets, raging with pent-up passion. 
He who had once locked visitors out himself if occasion 
required it — he who had said to one man ''Go," and he 
went; to another ''Come," and he came, was now driven 
out of the hotel, and saw cold-blooded, sleek, well-dressed 
managers and under-managers and clerks fill his place in 
the office, and sit at Madame Benoifs desk. 

I met Tom on the Rue de St. Petersbourg to-night, com- 
ing towards the hotel. He seemed quite overcome when he 
saw me, and I thought at first he was going to weep. But 
instead he asked me to lend him five or even two francs, 
which by luck I was able to do. He then went to interview 
the new manager of the hotel and see what he had to say. 
Tom's last words to me were: "Find me at 15, Rue d'Am- 
sterdam, when you want me." 

He always reminds me a little of that drunken rascal in 
Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" who came to 
the inn on the cliff one night with a trunk, and called for 
a glass of rum, and stopped five years ! 

Most of the guests have already removed from the Mon- 
asterial Hotel. The workmen are gradually invading every 
room. My turn will soon come, and like the monks, I shall 
have to go. It seems very hard, after three years' residence 
in a place which is filled with agreeable associations. But 
German enterprise, and capital, with its new bathrooms, 
and lifts, drives everything before it. 

How I shall miss the grand sound of the music coming 
up from the chapel, when they were practising a concert 
next door to our hotel. I could lie in bed with my window 
open on the garden and hear all the violins and the trumpets 
in a soft melody on a summer's evening — suddenly checked 
when the bar of music had to be tried over again. And at 
last played quite perfectly, so that one might sleep on it. 
• •••••>• 

69 



And Benoit's dogs barking in the night in the cold winter 
time. I shall miss all that, for I could hear them in the 
garden from my room. And when I waved my hand out 
to them in the morning they would look up and stop bark- 
ing by magic. 

But worst of all the swallows, in the spring and early 
summer. Oh, how I shall miss those ! Our huge monas- 
tery, you must remember, is immensely lofty. And perched 
up where I was on the top floor, with a dormer window on 
the garden, I was quite amongst the swallows. 

One summer morning I was dreaming, and they woke 
me from my sleep. I felt like a mountain stream that flows 
suddenly into the embrace of the sea, so sweet was the 
swift change from strange dreamland to glad and innocent 
reality of life. I lay quite still and the great circle of swal- 
lows, all whistling like wild, were still passing my windows. 
When the leaders had passed I was asleep, but the tail end 
of the circle found me aake and listening. How they would 
dive and poise and follow one another, high above the top- 
most trees in the garden. 

At twilight they were magnificent. 

They wove themselves into one maze of rapid song. They 
seemed the crowning glory over all the smiling city. As 
though Paris, the dear gay city, were making her toilet for 
the night and had a crown of singing birds to hover round 
her head. 



How brave the swallows are! Trusting to God, and 
leaning on the breeze they wing their way across wide 
oceans, having no money for the journey, only their tiny 
wings. What great hearts in what small bodies! They 
come back to our gardens in the spring, and find after a 
thousand weary miles the nest they built the year before, 
and there they settle down and twitter under our eaves, and 
poise in the air, and dart and scream as they catch their 
flies. 

Gee whiz — what a noise past my window! There must 
have been six all after the same fly. What twilight squab- 
bling, some two hundred feet above the ground. 

They seem to be hovering in some ordered dance in the 
air, threading the mazes of a wild quadrille, like winged 
partners, minute but mighty aeronauts before the Lord. 

They have sown all the heavens with song. 



70 



The swallows have gone away. They no longer weave 
their sudden flashes of music — those flying webs of song — 
outside my window in the early morning and at twilight. 

There was something beautiful in that swift, circling 
song, that maze of music which they made as they dashed 
round the garden. It was a sort of musical skirt-dance, a 
wild whirling and waving of whistling, in crescendo and 
diminuendo, full of artistic gusto. 

It flung itself hither and thither like long winding rib- 
bons of different colour. 

The swallows have gone. 

Scrape! Scrape! Scrape! Herrlau's forty workmen 
make a very different music on the stones of the monastery. 
His new lift, his heating apparatus — his new w.c.'s and 
bathrooms — his new name for the hotel — what a wicked 
sacrilege it seems! 

They tore my pictures off the walls while I was absent. 
The housekeeper couldn't wait one day ! 

"We must have your room, sir." 

And, by George ! she got it, and some of the pictures 
along with it, for I miss them to this day, especially the 
sketch of Craemer, which was pinned on my wall. It was 
lost by them the night he came to see me, after his two 
years' absence. 

And the servants threw away the flower that Fernande 

gave me, and they are d d thieves, the whole lot of the 

new management. 

I was moved down on the floor below, which faces the 
street, and trams make a hideous noise all night, and there 
is no garden, no swallows, no view. 

Well, but I suppose I shall have to take back all my hard 
words and bitter thoughts before the eternal mirth and 
good fellowship of Mr. Herrlau, the new manager. 

I dined with him and his housekeeper last night. What 
an amusing man. He brought to dinner, in a piece of pa- 
per, a great slab of cold charcuterie and divided it between 
us there. He said he had bought it outside, on his way 
home, for thirty-five centimes. He went straight from 
that to delicate wings of chicken and sweets fit for the gods, 
served by the immaculate hotel waiters. 

How we talked, too, over the benedictine ! He is an ex- 
cellent companion. 

71 



He has even offered to let me take over to my new atelier 
in the Latin quarter, when he pitches me out of this mon- 
asterial hotel at the end of the month, the fine furniture 
which now stands in my room, and which I am to buy from 
him for a mere song-. 

I lift my glass to Monsieur Herrlau and wish him, as he 
always wishes me, ''Another thousand a year!" 

FRERE COLLIN'S YARN. 

This morning being- a fine, brilliant day, I rose early, to- 
wit (as the owl said) at six o'clock, and descending the 
stairs — leaving my lamp burning merrily for boiling water 
— I went past all the litter created by Herrlau's workmen, 
who had scarcely yet appeared on the scene, and found my 
way down to Marthe's secret staircase. 

I had been thinking almost equally of Marthe and Made- 
moiselle Peyter (the two impossibles), but my mission was 
now a serious one, as I went, on the introduction of Mon- 
sieur I'Abbe Aubrejeac, to interview another abbe, who had 
lived forty years in this hotel, when it was a monastery. 

Opening a side door on the first landing, which had been 
pointed out to me two days previously, I descended another 
staircase and found myself in a passage where the inscrip- 
tion painted on the wall, ''Salle d'armes," left me in no 
doubt that I had found the room I was in search of. Open- 
ing a small door I found myself in an ante-room which 
presented somewhat the appearance of an actor's dressing- 
room, with pegs on which white blouses were hung, a look- 
ing-glass with dressing-table beneath it; and inside certain 
glass doors I heard the murmuring of priests, gathered to- 
gether for solemn service at this early hour. 

This, then, was the last refuge, the supreme retreat of 
those who had been hunted and expelled from their favour- 
ite monastery. 

Here was all that remained of the once formidable band 
of monk-missionaries to whom this entire building formerly 
belonged. They still continued almost secretly to celebrate, 
at this quiet hour, their sacred service. 

Many reflections arose in my mind as I stood there. Pre- 
sently the glass door opened, and I caught a glimpse of a 
superb altar and crucifix. The abbe whom I knew, and 
had already met at dinner in the hotel, then stepped forward 
and personally introduced me to an elderly man with sparse 
white hair — the Brother Collin — who had, during forty 
years of his life, known our hotel as his monastery. 

He said to me: "There are no less than twelve separate 

72 



establishments of the Oblat monks (to which order I my- 
self belong) in England. There is one at Kilburn, another 
in Edinburgh, in Dublin, in Leeds. 

"We were here only twenty members, belonging to the 
general administration, but this building was, as it were, an 
hotel for the accommodation of the French missionaries, 
who went and came to and from Canada, and in this way 
the building was often full. This establishment was the 
headquarters of the order. It was the Maison Generale. 

"The present salle-a-manger of your hotel was the Chap- 
elle Interieure. 

"We were first expelled by the State in 1880. We re- 
turned to the monastery in 1893, when the Russians came, 
headed by the Czar, to visit France, and when the Gov- 
ernment was, for the time being, less mindful of its hobby 
of persecution. Invited by President Felix Faure, these 
guests monopolised the Governmental and public attention, 
and the monks crept back into their home. 

"We were despoiled in 1901. Expelled in 1902. Even 
our furniture was stolen by the State. You have it now in 
the hotel." 

On this statement I wished the kind abbe good morning, 
as the sympathy of a layman like myself would have been 
a waste of words. 

At my request Monsieur le Frere Collin also wrote me 
the following descriptive historical sketch of the convent, 
and I have thought it interesting to give it in French — 
exactly as he wrote it. But I also append my translation 
of this document. 



"Nous allons esquisser a grands traits I'historique du 
Convent des Missionnaires OBLATS de Marie Im- 
maculee, situe rue de St. Petersbourg, a Paris. . . . 
D'abord il faut dire ce que sont ces missionnaires. 
Apres la grande Revolution Frangaise, Monseigneur 
Charles Joseph Eug^ene de MAZENOD fonda la 
Congregation des OBLATS pour combler le vide 
affreux que la revolution avait fait en France. Ces 
missionnaires se repandirent bientot dans toute la 
France, et les Eveques d'Angleterre et du Canada les 
demanderent et les etablirent dans leur diocese. C'est 
ainsi que nous les trouvons a Tower Hill, London; 
Kilburn; Leeds, Leith, Inchicore, etc. . . . Nous 
les rencontrons a Ceylon; et a Freemantle (Australie). 
"Paris etant le centre oti s'arreterent ces Mission- 
naires pour aller s'embarquer au Havre pour I'Amerique 



73 



et ailleurs, les Oblats furent pour ainsi dire forces de 
batir un pied-a-terre dans la Capitale. C'est le Cou- 
vent que Ton voit aujourd'hui. C'etait comme un grand 
hotel ou tous les Missionaires trouvaient la plus large 
hospitalite de la part de leurs superieurs majeurs qui 
en avaient fait leur residence. 

''A I'epoque ou les OBLATS batirent leur couvent, 
il-y-a cinquante ans, tout le quartier oil il est situe 
etait desert, des terrains vagues ou des rues etaient 
tracees sans aucune habitation; mais les constructions 
attirees par le Couvent ne tarderent pas a s'elever 
comme a I'ombre de cette residence des Missionaires. 
Tout en faisant le bien dans un quartier depouryue 
d'Eglise le Gouvernement les chassa de leur paisible 
demeure en 1880 — dans Toctave des Morts 5 No- 
vembre — mais ils conserverent la propriete du Cou- 
vent. 

"La visite des Marins Russes en France et a Paris 
et d'Alexandre IIL avait detourne les yeux du Gou- 
vernement de dessus le religieux expulses. Ceux-ci 
purent rentrer dans leur Couvent pour reprendre leur 
vie habituelle — pendant quelques annees encore. Mais 
la fameuse loi de 1901 leur prit — pour ne pas dire leur 
vola — leur biens et les chassa de leur paisible demeure. 
Alors le gouvernement de la Republique vendit le Cou- 
vent et I'Eglise attenante au Couvent a une Societe de- 
venue proprietaire du Couvent dont nous nous entre- 
tenons et dont nous en donnons I'historique aussi com- 
plet que possible, a ete loue pour en faire un hotel sous 
le nom Grand Hotel Canadien and Colonial — pour rap- 
peler probablement que les Missionaires chasses de leur 
maison ont pris la route du Canada et des Colonies An- 
glaises, plus hospitalieres que leur propre patrie ; au- 
jourd'hui I'hotel Canadien se transforme a Tinterieure 
et devint Hotel WINDSOR. Le style d'architecture 
soit exterieur soit interieure rappelera toujours que ce 
sont des moines qui ont bati et qui ont habits cette 
demeure. La Salle Capitulaire, devenue salle-a-man- 
ger, laisse deviner au premier d'entree et le corridor du 
nez de chausee. 

"L'Eglise gothique ornee de magnifiques vitreaux au 
choeur est rendue au culte, apres avoir ete sous scelles 
du Gouvernement pendant des annees et vendue par ce 
meme gouvernement. 

*T1 y a cinquante ans lorsque les missionnaires batirent 
leur Couvent au milieu des champs ou terrains vagues, 
le prise du terrain etait a bas prix. Aussi ils en achet- 

74 



erent plus qu'ils en avaient besoin pour leur Couvent, 
aujourd'hui Thotel WINDSOR jouit d'un jardin 
d'agrement. 



TRANSLATION. 

We are going to give a rough sketch of the history of 
the Convent of the Oblat Missionaries of the Order of 
Marie the Immaculate. This Convent is situated in the 
Rue de St. Petersbourg, Paris. We must commence by 
explaining that this is a Missionary Convent. After the 
great French Revolution, Monseigneur Charles Joseph Eu- 
gene de Mazenod founded the Congregation of the Oblats 
in order to fill the terrible blank which the Revolution had 
made in France. 

These Missionaries soon spread themselves throughout 
the entire length and breadth of France, and requests came 
from the Bishops of Great Britain and of Canada, asking 
them to come and settle in their dioceses. Thus it is that 
we find the Oblat Missionaries at Tower Hill, London; 
Kilburn; Leeds, Leith, Inchicore, etc. We find them at 
Ceylon; and at Freemantle in Austraha. As, however, 
Paris formed the centre where all these Missionaries stopped 
and found a temporary home before they went to Havre 
and embarked for America and elsewhere, the Oblats were 
forced to build what might be called a "pied-a-terre" in the 
capital. Thus arose the Convent that we are describing 
to-day. It was, as it were, a great hotel where all the Mis- 
sionaries found a hearty welcome, and a liberal hospitality 
awaiting them at the hands of their Superiors. To these 
latter the Convent served as a permanent residence. 

It was fifty years ago that the Oblat Monks constructed 
the Monastery, and at that time all this quarter whereon 
it stands was a desert composed of barren lands and grassy 
building sites through which streets had perhaps been 
planned, but never built. Once the Convent had been con- 
structed, however, there soon arose under the shade of this 
missionary residence a host of cottages and minor buildings. 

In spite of the fact that the Missionaries were doing a 
charitable work in a district where previously no Church 
existed, the Government did not hesitate in 1880 to expel 
them from their quiet Home, but the Convent remained 
their property. This expulsion took place in the Octave 
des Morts, on November the 5th. 

The visit of Alexander II. and the Admirals of the Rus- 
sian Marine to Paris next detracted the attention of the 
French Government from the Monks who had been ex- 

7S 



pelled, and these latter were able to return into their Con- 
vent and to resume their ordinary life, which they con- 
tinued for some years. 

But the famous law of 1901 took away from them — I 
might perhaps say "stole" from them — their property and 
expelled them once more from their tranquil seat. Then 
the Government of the Republic sold the Convent (and the 
Church attached to this Convent) to a Limited Company 
which had been formed for the express purpose of purchas- 
ing sacred buildings. This Company having thus become 
proprietors of the Convent whose history we have rapidly 
described, they leased it as an Hotel under the name of 
"The Grand Hotel Canadian and Colonial" — a name prob- 
ably chosen by way of perpetuating the memory of these 
Missionaries, most of whom when expelled had taken ship 
to Canada and other English Colonies, where they found 
extended to them a hospitality which was refused to them 
in their own country. 

To-day many alterations are taking place in the interior 
of the Hotel Canadian, and it assumes the new name of 
Hotel Windsor. 

The style of its architecture, both exterior and interior, 
will always, however, recall the fact that the Monks built 
this edifice and dwelt therein. The "Salle Capitulaire," now 
converted into a dining-room, is of a style of architecture 
which conclusively proves, at the first glance, that it was 
constructed to serve the purpose of a sacred building. 

The Gothic Church, the choir of which is ornamented 
with magnificent coloured glass windows, has been repur- 
chased by the Church, after having been placed for some 
time under the Government seals, and sold by the same Gov- 
ernment. 

Owing to the fact that fifty years ago, when the Mission- 
aries built their convent, building sites were obtainable in 
the quarter at very low prices, the Monks bought more land 
than they had actually need for. Thus it is that the Hotel 
Windsor to-day possesses a pleasant garden. 



THE PRIDE OF FRANCE. 



Fifteen pretty girls this morning, 
Marching through the town — 

Some were dressed in black or grey, 
Some in white or brown. 



Te 



They all stepped like the Queens of Earth, 
And smiled like happy lovers; 

Some went to work in hatters' shops — 
Others in shops of glovers. 

And one especially I saw — 

Her eyes shone like a star. 
She crossed, all trim as any yacht, 

The Place de I'Opera. 

Her mouth was tucked in dimples fine, 
Her chin spoke tomes of Love, 

And in her hat a pheasant fine 
She carried up above. 

Oh, Tra-la-la, the Paris girl, 
She sets the coldest heart awhirl 
With ankle neat and winsome curl. 



17 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. 

The "American Register" is a weekly newspaper printed in Eng- 
lish, which is sold every Sunday on the Boulevards of Paris. 
Run by Count Hamon, whose magnificent offices are at 8, Place 
de rOpera, just over the offices of the "Echo de Paris." The 
paper is amalgamated with a banking business, where the writer 
and the young French lady mentioned in the following chapter 
worked together for some time. At a certain period the huge 
electric-lit sign, which is fixed on the face of the building, and 
which helps to make the Place de I'Opera so brilliant at night 
time, ceased to shine, owing, probably, to the financial crisis in 
America. 

At the time of writing this light is still extinguished. 



BABY PEYTER. 

"Canst thou not drink this cup? 
Look! there are tears in it!" 

December ii, 1906. 

Baby Peyter is so bright, but I can write no poetry about 
her. She was sent to us by Broadbridge of ever-blessed 
memory — and Loewy engaged her forthwith. 

Baby Peyter will sit still while I sketch her — still as a 
mouse. Afterwards, with a heavenly smile, she will ask for 
the sketch and pout if it is refused. Baby Peyter drank my 
tea yesterday and was to have given me a kiss for it — ^but 
she owes me that still. 

One day, perhaps, when the room is quiet, and the long 
rays of the afternoon sun come slanting into our workroom 
striking across her table — when all the world is absent. Baby 
Peyter will give me (comme la benediction d'un amour pur) 
that beautiful kiss, not for the cup of tea at all, but for me, 
so I can steer my way out of the dark by the memory of her 
beauty and kindliness. 

Thus amid all that is most loathsome in life, while the 
corpses of dead ambitions jostle one another on the reeking 
tide, and the ghosts of past years rise up and mock our 
present misery, this trim little snow-white yacht comes 
bearing down upon us, showing a light in the darkness, and 
hailing us with the merry voice of hope. 



78 



Baby Peyter talks and writes English almost as well as 
French, as she has been in England. 

December 17, 1906. 

It was on Saturday morning that I went into the office at 
twelve, and finding Miss Peyter was engaged in a long con- 
versation with Clement, I took offence, and tore in half the 
water-colour portrait of her that I had begun. It tore 
across the neck, just under the chin, in a slanting line. The 
drawing lay in two parts for her to see as she went out, and, 
like a born phraseur, I framed the words of my excuse : 

"I have torn it because you have torn my heart." 

As she moved brusquely away I seemed to descend four 
steps into the darkness of a gigantic pit, lined with pictures 
of the past. Here stood solemn figures, with fingers point- 
ing to sad lessons graven in everlasting characters on the 
walls of memory. The darkness of the pit echoed with this 
monotonous refrain: "Bad-tempered people live always 
alone, they have no friends ; like outcasts and exiles they 
huddle o'er the dying embers of Lost Opportunities, shunned 
by all, and meeting the resentment of all Wise Men." 

I was now descended twenty steps into the pit. The 
noise of life grew dim. I walked like one branded with 
the curse of melancholy. I still fulfilled the usual petty 
tasks of duty; but they all semed shrunken and dwarfed 
into infinitesimal and absurd proportions beside the gigantic 
signs and warnings in the portentous pit. 

Five hundred nights eclipsed the light of day, ^nd voices, 
dreadful in their derision, cried relentlessly: 

"Doomed ! Forgotten ! Unforgiven !" 

In the world above the pit, where the office stands, near 
the Opera House, I saw her pass out into the passage, and, 
following, watched him and her talking together near the 
door. They were discussing my character. He said to her, 
without doubt (for I could not hear the words, as they 
talked French) : 

"Beware of that man. I know him." 

Forty steps into the pit. One must feel one's way. And 
all the walls are prickly with swords of Reprobation, and 
Daggers of Innuendo, that make the Mind bleed and the 
Soul sigh. 

Here one learnt terrible lessons : How the opening bud 
may wither, before the flower has bloomed ; how, under the 
Roses of Life— lie pitfalls. And behind the happy hours 
— when all the silence of the night is full of chiming bells- 
chaos and ruin reign — and loneliness. 

.79 - ^ 



(All this was real, because I felt it.) 

Without doubt it was his fault. While I was out he must 
have crept, snake-like, across ray path and told her not to 
trust me. 

Not understanding my native language, he can have no 
human sympathies. And, jealous of her friendship for me, 
he — that wretch — has stolen from me her regard — ^not to 
keep himself (for he could not do that) — but to spite me. 

He knows nothing of what this costs me, or how I staked 
my life and all my thoughts on her. 

A gloomy and miserable lunch at Chartier's — reflecting 
in wrath how best to smite him. Yet haunted sometimes by 
the thought that the fault is mine. Now I have made my- 
self the laughing-stock of the office. For, like others whom 
I knew, she will take sides against me, and stand, all guard- 
ed by the others, to point the finger of scorn at me from her 
point of vantage. This is all an old story told again. All 
this has happened once or twice before. 

But in the darkness and suddenness of the descent this 
Pit is darker than the others. She was so bright and win- 
ning — such a child. One cannot talk to children of strange 
things, of moods, misunderstandings, and the like. That 
is the good they do us — to brush away these cobwebs from 
the mind and set the bells of laughter jingling. Nothing is 
serious in their hearts, and so the seriousness of life dies 
out and leaves its joy. 

I see now what has caused all this. I was alone with 
her a moment last evening — Friday night. The others 
were gone, and I felt a lump rising in my throat, and 
wanted to lift her in my arms and embrace her. Baby, I 
called her. 

Well, I have got in my heart a bitter feeling that must be 
satisfied. A friend in the restaurant says something to me 
about my not having visited his nephew. Visiting .^4 
nephew ? A nice time to suggest that ! 

But all this is happening in the world above. They do 
not see that I am working in a pit, and can visit no one, and 
must be left alone to brood on everlasting losses of which 
they know nothing and which they would not understand. 

So I go back to the office ; but I can hardly sit there. She 
does not talk to me now. Once she glanced at me with 
suspicion. He has done his work. He has poisoned her 
mind. There are, however, things to be done in the office. 
She moves her chair so that I can no longer see her. I am 
now entirely behind her, in the darkness of mind of those 
shut out of Paradise. 

I feel something of regret, also, that all humour passes 

80 



out of the situation. Because it is not humorous to lose a 
pretty friend. When one has walked long alone it is hard 
to lose that sweet companion who joined us just an hour 
ago and whom we have driven away by some bad mood of 
ours. I hear her soft tones saying "Good night" to me, and 
the clasp of her little hands was a guarantee of Peace and 
Happiness. O close, close she sat to me and spoke low 
and lisping words. The darkness was not yet come. 

SATURDAY NIGHT. 

Taking down letters at seven o'clock. I cannot escape 
from this accursed room. The manager continues mum- 
bling about his business affairs and I write it in shorthand, 
mechanically. He does not know that I am walking through 
a Pit of Misery. She must have gone now. If she has not 
gone I shall hand her a note to ask her to come into the 
Salon and speak to me. 

It grows later and later. This dictation continues. By 
this time She must have gone. Yes. The rooms are empty 
when I return to write my notes. I write her a letter to 
explain why I was in a temper. I find myself on a 'bus 
which goes along glittering avenues. It is 8.30 p.m. The 
road is deserted, and the great 'bus seems to lose itself in 
interminable plains of lamplit darkness. 

At last we arrive and deliver the note. It does little 
good. We are glad to see her sister for a moment, outside 
the door of her flat, smiling and pleasant. 

Away once more. Into the dark. We have supper at 
Guibout's. A horrible meal. No peace. No sleep all night. 
Thoughts of revenge. Next morning is Sunday. To the 
office at eleven. 

We see her empty chair. We do letters and go to lunch 
at Chartier's. 

We have now evolved in our head a complete scheme of 
a harangue to be delivered against this Clement. It begins 
thus, in French : — 

*"C'est curieux que vous n'est pas presse d'apprendre 
la langue anglaise. C'est dommage, parceque les expli- 
cations sont plus difficiles. Et sans doute vous trouvez 
mon fagon de parler fangais est tres amusante ! 

"(Plus feroce.) Mais moi, je ne le trouve pas amu- 
sante. Et je crois il-y-a une maniere de regler une 
affaire de cette sorte — une maniere frangaise, qui est 
tout-a-fait agreeable. 

"Et je vous invite, Monsieur" (avec ironie) "de 
regler cette meme affaire dans cette excellente facon 
frangaise — ou bien vous etes un sale lache!" 

81 



(By this time the victim ought to be worked up for a 
good quarrel.) 

"Et puis, apre que vous etiez parti hier soir, on m'a 
appris que vous allez par qi et par la, murmurant et 
chuchotant les mensonges touchant mon carectere. 
Comme un couleuvre qui rampe par couleuvre, qui 
rampe par gi et par la, chuchotant les mensonges tou- 
chant les gens honnetes ! ! 

"Vous parlez de Mademoiselle Peyter??? 

"Je vous assure, mon petit, que je n'ai rien a faire 
avec Melle Peyter. C'est a vous — a vous que je parle 
— et je vous coigne dans le nez." 

The recital of this programme of vengeance, so shortly 
to be enacted, afforded me great satisfaction, even in the 
pit of misery. 

We practice the phrases and even look up words in the 
dictionary. 

No doubt we shall be expected to fight a duel. 

So a horrible Sunday passes. 

In the afternoon we find ourselves in the Salvation Army 
Room at 66 Rue Montmartre. Gloomy forebodings. We 
have gone astray. We have sunk very low. 

At last, having returned to the office and posted the let- 
ters at the Gare du Nord, we get back to dinner at Gui- 
bout's. 

(We look forward to another hideous night — to lie awake 
trembling with rage, reciting the French programme.) 

Overwhelmed with fatigue and thoughts we gain rest at 
last in listening to a piece of music called "Supreme 
Iveresse." A vision passes before us. We are in a great 
church. It is night time. Across the echoing flags pass 
hosts of shadowy figures like the dead. Here and there, 
his arms folded upon his breast, is the lifeless body of some 
warrior, the battle of whose life is past. As the golden 
chalices of incense swing to and fro, these dead, who have 
at last found rest, lie still for ever. There is something 
intensely restful in the sight. 

It may be that this vision belongs to the pit. But it is one 
of midnight, of everlasting calm; of the passing of souls 
out of their corporeal prisons ; of the end of all things. If 
any refrain is mingled with this solemn scene, it is that of a 
requiem, almost a forgiveness. 



*The Author is careful to present this letter in the absurdly bad 
French in which it was written four years ago, without the many 
corrections which he would be inclined to make in it to-day. 

82 



We go and get our washing, and so home, and sleep 
quietly, and art school in the morning. 
And then it is time to go to the office. 



MONDAY. 

Now the hour has arrived. In the midst of the pit a 
scene rises up. It is the old office at 8, Place de I'Opera. I 
mount the stairs. The task is set and must be accomplished. 
However cold it seems to go back there without any greet- 
ing, every man must walk forward and face the music, or 
the absence of music. This is a fact, where the dark pit 
and the life of the world above mingle for a moment. 

For she is surely there, though she will not speak to me. 

I enter. She turns round. She wishes me good morning. 
There is a smile on her face. She excuses herself for not 
having seen me that Saturday night. It was too late. She 
was undressing. 

And she would have written to me, but I did not put my 
address on the letter. 

A great black veil seems rent in twain. The darkness of 
the pit is rolled up and folded away. If the room were not 
full of people I could sink on my knees before this kind 
angel who gives me back my life and my hope. 

It was the voice of my darling that drove away the dark- 
ness. And I heard outside in the street the tin trumpet of 
the chair-mender, trembling across the frost-laden air of 
the morning; and the shouts of those who sold the papers 
seemed like music and mingled with all the cheerful sounds 
of life outside the pit. 

THE DEMENAGEMENT IN THE OFFICE. 

Thursday, December 20, 1906. 

To-day the great demenagement took place. It was de- 
cided that all of us should move into Frankfort's big room. 
You never saw such an amusing chaos in all your life. 

Miss Peyter leapt upon the great new table that came 
from the Salon de Lecture and danced a sort of war dance 
by way of doing honour to the change of rooms and inau- 
gurating the new era of anticipated prosperity. 

Then there was a sort of game of scramble — postman's 
chair, or whatever they call it — to get the place at the huge 
table which was next to Miss Peyter. We put our ma- 

83 



chines down on the table, and I gradually slid my Reming- 
ton into the place of Clement's — which was an impossible 
place, by the way, because it was between the table and the 
wall where nobody could pass you. Still, like that, I should 
be next to her. 

And Frankfort came in and altered the whole arrange- 
ment. It was fair agony. But presently Miss Peyter chose 
her own place and came and sat next to me. 

All this time Hayden was kept running about from place 
to place, for everybody was changing rooms; and Hayden 
wanted the letters for Cloudstone for the post. 

Miss Peyter to-day read my "Saturday to Monday." She 
is a darling. 

Oh, Life — thine outlines are never fixed for one moment. 
Thou art changeable like the changing waves of the Ocean, 
which cross and recross, and curl themselves in foamy 
crests, and are never weary of restlessness. 

And poor Man tries to follow his Star of Hope across all 
this roaring, raving abyss. And often, how often, this Star 
is quite eclipsed and he runs after false gods. Then he sees 
the little Star afar off, and strikes out once more to reach 
it. And it seems to him that the Star descends upon the 
earth — all at once it his dear reality, is close to him. He 
stretches out his arms to seize it. He believes he feels 
against his cheek an exquisite caress of a Spirit. The flesh 
seems nowhere. 

Then there is a great silence. And it is Death who 
sweeps him away. But the Star — he has the Star, folded 
against his breast. 

There was a short circuit in the office to-day at Miss Pey- 
ter's elbow, and a great white flame flashed out of the wail. 
She was so startled she jumped aside and fell on the floor 
— or to escape it she flew there. I thought she was hurt, 
but she was not hurt in the slightest. 



I have known when the small tangles of Life (like the 
difficult skeins of knitting wool that a woman's fingers will 
unravel with a light and delicate touch) — when all these 
tangles of Life will straighten out, and a great spirit of 
progress and uniformity carry all before it. 

Then the discordant sounds of the orchestra of Life, the 
false notes made by the musicians who are still only tuning 
their instruments — are swept away in the flood of the full 

84 



melody ; and thus and thus — all the petty bickerings of life 
are borne away on the strong current of a rising tide. And 
then it is that we look for the birth of great things. 

Poems, long ravelled up in the brains of dreamers, un- 
fold the glory of their splendour — like a flower unfolds its 
petals in the full blaze of the July sun. Then it is that 
those long trampled on rise up in revolution, and kings, 
hidden in their golden palaces, hear the dull roaring of the 
armies of their rebel subjects, and flee, pale-faced, to hide 
their crowns, and then themselves. 

Then it is that the white Dove of Learning, flying above 
the flood of Ignorance, finds the dry Land of Knowledge, 
and comes back to the Arks of Industry, bearing in her 
mouth the green olive leaf — the Secret of some new and 
wonderful success, in Art or Music. 

Happy are those who, content to take their lot in this 
sometimes sorrowful world, and forced to listen to much 
that jars upon the ear, to many discordancies and much bit- 
terness, hear now and again, rising above the din of work- 
shops and the clash of antagonistic creeds and politics, the 
sublime song of the gods, who weave overhead in the looms 
of heaven the great rainbow-coloured raiment of the years 
of fuller knowledge and maturer wisdom that are yet to 
come. 



BABY AND THE 'BUS. 

When Baby and I rode up to the Place de I'Opera on the 
'bus together, all the streets went by us like enchanted 
places, for we cast over them the mantle of her kindliness. 

Her little hand held the rail before me, and I could put 
my hand over hers, in saying "Baby, baby, baby." That 
was her name in my heart. 

As we went together like this I searched for the words in 
which to frame my love; and when I found them, she an- 
swered with a silence, and downcast eyes. Then I loved 
her. 

When the journey was ended, these recollections were 
stored up, like the honey that the bees carry home from 
their visits across the flower gardens. 

I went away on my own road, but I was not alone. For 
all my thoughts were answered out of her breast. And the 
flowers of poetry sprang up, when I thought of her eyes, 
her lips, and the sweet tones of her voice. 

All the pealing laughter is done with. All the wicked 

85 



sounds that she made with her rosy mouth, and the tapping 
of the small feet on the ground. 

There is a silence like the grave. The noise of trams 
sometimes runs across this desert of silence, and subsides 
and passes, leaving a chill and a threat and a menace in the 
air. To-day she passed me in the street — without saying a 
word. 

"Zut, Zut ! Ca me barbe !" she would say ! And she blew 
three puffs of cigarette smoke into the air, and tapped with 
her little feet on the ground. 

THE CAT AND THE APRON. 

Miss Peyter is right in a great many things, and I go 
blundering, thinking she is wrong, and she has a clearer 
vision than I have and treads softer and speaks more low. 

There are many people who think that facts are worth 
little, and that the fictions compiled by the imagination are 
worth all the actual events of life put together. 

I cannot agree with them. 

I see a twilight scene, but I see it with difficulty. 

It is high up over one of those enclosed courtyards that 
the French love for their solitude and their silence. It is 
Sunday afternoon, and the hour is about 4.30 or 5 p.m. 

Yes, I should say only 4.30. I see that there is a room 
and a girl is lying, dressed, in the half darkness, on a bas- 
ket-work chair by the window. 

How lofty is this window, far up above the world, like 
an eagle's eerie, perched on a misty rock which the clouds 
almost kiss. 

This woman is a great and beautiful sight. She is only 
twenty-three years of age, and she lies there by the window 
like a flower that the m^l|Hfta||dener has had in his basket, 
because it was so beautnul^^ra: his girl is more than all 
the town that lies down below and around and outside this 
quiet courtyard. 

It was, one might say, for her that this town was built 
and that the world was made. 

To carry her, clever engineers made the steamboats that 
ply on the river and the trains that run under the earth. 

All the roads in the world lead to this quiet courtyard. 

For her the great markets were built, that she might have 
the fruit of distant countries and taste the great oranges of 
Seville and the nectarines of Italy. 

86 



The crowd, all jostling- together, are making way at this 
moment for someone who comes to see her. 

He comes in haste, as one who is late and must catch a 
train. His plans are all made and he carries with him the 
implements of warfare — a cat in a basket; a piece of lovely 
music, about one who offered her eyes that her blind lover 
might see. His pockets are bulging with other things. He 
has a paintbox and newspapers, and so on. But he has no 
peace of mind. He is prepared to act, but all his imple- 
ments cause him intense anxiety. The cat escapes from 
the basket in the train. 

As his mind was engaged upon other thoughts there was 
nothing very comical in this incident. It seemed to him that 
all these events were overweighted with real tragedy. 

No doubt at the bottom of his heart he saw the real ^oal 
of all true existence — a friendship suddenly mellowed into 
something of a thousand changing colours — call it love — 
call it what you like. 

But he was intensely annoyed because his real, deep feel- 
ings were disturbed at every step by the necessity of buying 
tickets, taking cabs, looking hurriedly and feverishly at 
clocks, and holding the lid of the basket tight so that the cat 
should not escape. 

Moreover, accustomed in an hour of a great upheaval of 
the soul (where all those absurd things were really only 
the froth on the surface of a maelstrom of surging waters) 
to scan the faces of the people who passed in such thick 
clouds before him, he was terribly and painfully aware once 
or twice that a woman's eye was dwelling upon him in a 
sort of quiet surprise which came perilously near pity — 
such a look as one would give to something or somebody who 
was attempting to descend the side of a mountain, unaware 
that a hideous precipice was awaiting him a few steps away. 

But then again he would see the eyes of some woman 
downcast; and he thought: I shall gain my desire, for she 
is blushing. 

All this time the cat was struggling and meowing in the 
basket. 

Sometimes the whole of its head escaped from one corner 
of the basket ; sometimes its two white paws protruded and 
the claws clutched frantically at the air. 

It was hot and crowded in the Metropolitan. 

This man went on to meet his fate. 

But as he did not know what fate it would be, he naturally 
just hoped for the best. 



He could not see what I see now — the quiet room high up, 
with the girl lying by the window, far up above the court- 
yard. 

It is almost dark in that room. Twilight is coming fast. 

The people have forgotten the day. They are beginning 
to wake to the joy of the evening and of the night. 

This man did arrive at last. 

But nothing happened. 

The hours went by; the clocks tricked and it grew still 
darker. 

When he got back to his ofhce to work that evening it 
struck him that it was the chance of a life-time, and he 
went into a cupboard, where a dark blue apron that she 
wears sometimes in the office, hangs on a peg. 

Its upper rim, which encircles her waist, has all sorts of 
colours in silk worked into it. But the other part of the 
apron is dark blue — a sort of peacock blue — with the bright 
colours all confined to the waistband. 

This man, who had been in such a hurry, and who was 
now entirely alone in the office, took this apron in his hands 
and pressed it hard against his face. He kisses it and even 
bit it. 

His heart was broken, because she was far away. 



THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. 

I stood to-night by a place where the waters meet, in a 
turn of the river. 

I have stood there before ; but never so musically did the 
waters run as to-night, where they came to clasp their 
white frothy hands, in whisperings and troubled silences, 
flowing over each other and under each other. 

Some of the waters of the river come down from the 
mountain by one side and some by another ; and they meet 
here below in the valley under the trees. And they cross 
over and under, full of whisperings and talkings and sud- 
den outbursts of laughter. 

To-night, at twilight, as I stood there I saw the stepping- 
stones, some bare and dry and others wet with the flowing 
of the waters, and a girl came down under the trees on the 
bank of the further side and she sang aloud, like a lark 
sings to itself: "How beautiful it is, the meeting of the 
waters !" 

But there came an echo to her voice above the murmuring 
of the river. And from the opposite side of the river a 
man stepped forth on the stepping-stones and the maiden 
went forward over the stepping-stones to meet him. 

88 



And when he came to the middle of the river, where all 
the little waves of the meeting waters laughed wildly to- 
gether, he took her hands and led her back by the way he 
came. 

Then I heard, even further and further away, the sound 
of their voices, like echoes coming from the leafy solitudes : 

"How beautiful it is — the meeting of the waters !" 

And where the waters met all was silent again, save the 
whispering and the laughing of the waves. 

Only away in the woods two, who had gone out to meet 
one another on the stepping-stones, were alone in their joy. 

• • • • •• • • 

Who is it that took away my violets? 

Did a passer-by brush them from my hand, or did I give 
them to somebody in the street, or did a policeman take 
them from me ? They are gone, my beautiful violets. Who 
is it that took them away? 

And I heard the violets cry out : 

"We are in her bosom !" 



BABY PEYTER. 

May 12, 1910. 
O, Baby, why have I wandered so far away and become so 

wild — 
If you hear a tap on the window-pane it's only a little child 
Come back with torn and bleeding feet to kneel at your 

side and pray: 
"Forgive us as we forgive them, and give us our daily 
bread this day!" 

And what I have seen on the mountain-side let no man ask 

me more — 
Sing me, darling, the song you sang so sweet in the days of 

yore. 
Out of the storm and thunder I climb to your quiet nest — 
You can heal the worst of my woes. Baby, by the thoughts 

from your gentle breast. 



89 



CHAPTER XII. 



A PROPOS OF DUELLING. 



One day, when the "American Register" was still being 
run by Count Hamon, and when geraniums and azaleas 
made a glorious show in the flower-boxes o the fourteen 
windows of the banking department at 8, Place de I'Opera 
— the days when Baby Peyter* was queen of all hearts, and 
Logue was our nursery gardener — when the Penn Wyom- 
ing Copper Company was flourishing like a green bay tree, 
and Hayden the shaven-headed Gargon-de-Bureau, talked 
hopefully of realising on his sandy property somewhere in 
Australia . . . I sat down and wrote my weekly arti- 
cle called ''News of the Week in Paris," which generally 
filled the first two columns of the front page of our cele- 
brated journal hebdomadaire. Anyone who takes the trou- 
ble to look up this last delightful French word in the dic- 
tionary will find that it has nothing to do with our old friend 
the dromedary, but means on the contrary, "weekly" news- 
paper. 

This week I chose for my subject an article written by 
Henri Rochefort for the current number of the "Intransi- 
geant." 

I had had my eye for some time past on the conspicuous 
figure of Henri Rochefort, that unrivalled and brilliant 
pamphleteer, whose name on the title page of any Parisian 
journal is a guarantee of quadrupled circulation. / 

A man of undaunted personal courage, the fearless cham- 
pion of every down-trodden race, he stands out a towering 
political figure above the mass of present-day mediocrity. 
His dome-like forehead, splendid leonine locks and piercing 
eyes have been magnificently perpetuated in the celebrated 
portrait by Marcel Baschet, which was hung in the Salon 
of 1908. 

Exiled from France for political reasons which redound 
to his credit, M. Henri Rochefort resided for a period of 
six years in England, where he was welcomed by the high- 
est in the land. Perfectly acquainted with all our English 

*See Chapter XL; "The Light that Failed." 
90 



institutions, he brings to bear upon the daily article which 
he writes for his paper "La Patrie" a full comprehension 
of international politics and a deep insight into the intricate 
details of diplomacy which are denied to many statesmen. 

If, in the course of his active and eventful life, Henri 
Roche fort has occasionally laid down his pen, it has gen- 
erally been to take up his sword, in order that he might de- 
fend his written statements. A splendid type of the jour- 
nalist of the old school, this distinguished Frenchman has in 
the course of his lifetime fought over fifty duels. 

The articles daily signed by his name, which rain like 
thunderbolts from his pen, are rather to be qualified as 
manifestations of the irresistible forces of Nature, than 
mere emanations from a human brain. 

My remarks regarding this gentleman were duly printed 
in the "American Register" Paris edition, and attracted the 
attention of Henri Rochefort, who was then leader-writer 
of the "Intransigeant" newspaper in Paris. It appears that 
Rochefort was strolling through the Chambre des Deputies, 
when a friend called his attention to my article. He in- 
stantly threatened to send his seconds up to Count Hamon, 
the then proprietor of the "American Register." Count 
Hamon reported the matter to me, saying that I must take 
care what I wrote, as he might have had to fight a duel 
over this matter. I replied: "Thank you, sir. If you will 
allow me to defend my own article, I shall be very pleased 
to do so. A duel with Henri Rochefort would certainly 
be a new experience, and I am quite prepared to meet this 
man, who wishes to fight with everybody!" 

"Oh !" repHed Count Hamon, with a laugh in his voice, 
"M. Rochefort would not fight with you ! He would chal- 
lenge me, because I am the proprietor of the journal." 

There is no doubt that Count Hamon made a great mis- 
take in not arranging this duel, for the various business 
speculations of his banking concern were just then in a 
critical state and the noise which would have been made 
around a duel with such a personality as Henri Rochefort 
would have constituted a magnificent advertisement for his 
house and might have effectually restored the failing for- 
tunes of "Hamon and Compaigne." Two or three years 
later the bank at 8, Place de I'Opera fell under a shadow, 
and its collapse is a matter of public notoriety. The gera- 
niums and azaleas disappeared from the window-boxes. 
Baby Peyter and Logue and all of us were swept away. 
The electric-lit sign became extinguished, the furniture was 
sold, and even Hayden may now be met wandering work- 
less on the boulevards. 

91 



I now reproduce the article which I wrote for the "Ameri- 
can Register": 

Article printed in the "American Register" of Sunday, De- 
cember 30, 1906, to which M. Rochefort took exception, 
entitled 

"NEWS OF THE WEEK IN PARIS." 

"A very clever article by that fanatic thrower of thun- 
derbolts, Henri Rochefort, appeared in last Saturday's 
number of the paper he controls. This man, who has 
travelled all over the world, seems to make his soul the har- 
bouring place for every bitterness and animosity that poli- 
tics can excuse or indigestion cause. Yet occasionally, 
strange to say, he turns his envenomed pen from some hu- 
man target and sits down to talk sense. Then he is at his 
best, and shows a wide and philosophical temperament 
His scope of vision seems to expand, and he takes the sane 
and practical point of view of the historian or the sage. 
In his article in the 'Intransigeant' with regard to the Chan- 
nel Tunnel he says that he is convinced that this project 
will never become a reality, and he quotes the words of Mr. 
Cavendish-Bentinck, whom he once met when on a visit 
to England, and who, in answer to M. Rochefort's question 
concerning the probability of such a tunnel being ever bored, 
replied : 'We are separated from the rest of Europe by our 
silver girdle, the sea, and we shall certainly never relinquish 
this defence.' 

"M. Rochefort argues that those among the French who 
are sanguine about the ultimate construction of the tunnel 
have never lived in London, and do not appreciate the im- 
mense difference between that capital and Paris. He says 
that the whole spirit of London revolts against the idea of 
an invasion of that capital by thousands of French unem- 
ployed, clerks, mechanics, etc., who would then find it such 
an easy matter to reach London in a few hours' railway 
journey. The English workmen, finding themselves the 
victim of this invasion, would be the first to resent it. Al- 
ready, says M. Rochefort, the Germans have created for 
themselves a bad name in London by their readiness to un- 
dersell Englishmen in offices and workshops," etc., etc. 
(The article continues for a column or so on other matters 
not affecting Henri Rochefort, and is signed "E. B. P." 
At that time I was not permitted to sign my full name under 
these articles.) 



02 



A PROPOS OF lyVELLmG— Continued. 

(Printed in the "American Register/' August 19, 1906.) 
Some may remember the incident related in one of Du- 
mas' works, where two brilliant swordsmen who had been 
acting as seconds for a friend were returning home on foot. 
The path led them through a forest, and they presently 
came upon an open clearing where a stretch of turf, per- 
fectly level, seemed specially designed for the purpose of 
tempting them to a little sword practice. The light was 
perfect; the scene was tranquil. Instinctively they both 
drew their swords, and with the exquisite skill of fence 
which belonged to the period they passed half an hour of 
breathless happiness on the sward. At last, carried away 
by his enthusiasm, one of the swordsmen so far forgot the 
playful nature of the encounter as to deal the other a death- 
blow. Carrying his friend away in his arms he gave him 
a decent burial in the depths of the forest, and was over- 
whelmed with remorse when he remembered that owing to 
the absence of seconds the duel had been unconstitutional. 



One finds in the record of French duelling the horrible 
account of the two men who hired a cab and having given 
instructions to the driver to drive rapidly and continuously 
round a certain route pulled the blinds down and com- 
menced to attack one another with daggers. The left arm 
of each man was bound to his side. In his right hand he 
clutched the weapon. At length the cab came to a stand- 
still. The doors were opened and both men were found 
dead inside. 



93 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE "HERALD" OFFICE. 



"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!" 

I should like just to write a few lines about the "Herald" 
offices in Paris, especially the night staff down at the Rue 
du Louvre. 

I am going to convey exact impressions, not nasty insinua- 
tions. 

I am not one of those journalists who consider it neces- 
sary to bite the hand that feeds them. 

When first I heard of the "New York Herald" in Paris I 
thought to myself: "This is one of those rotten American 
papers, transported into Paris, where it is not fit to exist 
amidst the high-class journalism which exists in French. 
Enormous sensational headlines, false news, contradictions, 
absence of literary articles, the mere bald, yellow-bearded 
journalism of the Yankee! 

Then someone told me that the night staff of the "Herald" 
had to work awfuly hard, so I didn't take any more trouble 
about getting on it. I contented myself with reading the 
Saturday edition of the "Figaro," with the literary supple- 
ment, and every day the "Le Journal," with its marvellous 
"Contes," written by French masters of the art of prose. 

Now and again I picked up the coloured Sunday supple- 
ment of the "Herald" and shed tears of mirth over the 
antics of Buster Brown, the follies of the Tiny Tads, the 
eccentricities of Fluffy Ruffles, and the magnificent pano- 
rama of experiences through which passes, always with 
beaucoup d'esprit, our friend Little Nemo. 

Apart from that I rather damned the "Herald." 

They had never replied to my letters making application 
for a post on the staff, and I was fairly happy up on the 
"American Register" till I finished my engagement, went 
to St. Malo for my holiday, and, returning, found it an 
urgent matter to become a paid member of some work- 
giving institution. 

In an evil hour (as Frost would say) I met Miss Hill — 
charming girl — French or English, whichever way you like 
to take her. Third one of the kind I have met in Paris. 



94 



Mademoiselle said there was no place vacant on the 
"Evening Standard." She was doing secretarial work up 
there for "Percival" (Raphael) and knew all about it. 

But why didn't I try the '^Herald"? 

Well, of course, on her recommendation I thought it was 
a great thing. She was all alone up there. And I found it 
the hardest possible thing to talk business seriously. Won- 
derful taste Raphael has in girls. All his lady secretaries 
seem ahke. Perfect blossoms, chock full of independence, 
wit, and learning. Mother of this girl, on the one side Eng- 
lish. Father, French — speaks either language like a native. 
Takes both down rapidly in shorthand. 

She said: "You meet these 'Herald' people in the cafes, 
you know. So go and get a job there, like that.'' 

So I went down to St. Malo. 

On my return I called in the Rue du Louvre and saw 
Smith. 

Curious thing, but I always thought Smith was the edi- 
tor-in-charge ! He used to come out to see me in his shirt- 
sleeves. I could almost hear the rushing and tearing rattle 
of the linotype machines in the printing room beyond, but 
that was forbidden ground. 

Smith was so huge — being Scotch — they call him Garden 
instead of Gordon Smith — a few letters make all the differ- 
ence, as the woman said in the breach of promise action. 
Smith was strong, large, and influential-looking without be- 
ing ponderous, so I went for him bald-headed. 

And why not? He had been fifteen years with the "Her- 
ald" and I had no doubt he was the man who could give 
me a place. 

I told him I knew the artists in the Latin Quarter and 
that I could give him right off a column of names of well- 
known French and American artists and where they hap- 
pened to be "passing" at that moment their summer holi- 
days, and why they had chosen that particular place. 

"You can try it," said Smith. 

The door of the Rue du Louvre office shut with a snap. 
The die was cast and the article written. 

It went like hot cakes. 

In addition to this I called every day at 104, Avenue des 
Champs Elysees, about 8.30, 9, or 10 a.m. to see James Gor- 
don Bennett, but I only saw his owls. There were owls 
everywhere, throughout his magnificent apartment. 

Two of them, with electric-lit eyes, looked down at you 
at night from the top of a book-case. The long curved 
arms of the chairs in the hall, tapered up Hke the sides of 
rocking chairs, and ended in wooden owls. 

95 



Every day I called at this abode of wisdom, I was dressed 
in my very best — white waistcoat, gold chain, buttonhole, 
and carried sketches to show the Commodore my prowess 
in the art of illustration. 

Sometimes, on my way up the Champs Elysees, I would 
meet Burlingham, a philosopher, who said to me: 

"You will never see the Commodore unless you get an 
appointment. But you can keep on trying for all that; be- 
cause he is the only man who can give you a position in the 
office. Try sending him a pneumatic." 

The pneumatic was duly sent, and I got a reply from Mr. 
Bennett next day, saying there was no vacancy on the staff, 
but he hoped I would subscribe art notes from the Latin 
Quarter, for which I should be paid regular space rates. 

A week later, however, I was down at the Rue du Louvre, 
when the editor-in-charge came out to speak to me, and said 
he had had a telephone message from the Commodore that 
afternoon and that I was to be given a week's trial on the 
night staff at Frs.125 per week as salary. 

Credit went up all round. I got a lot of stuff printed, 
which was all paid extra to my editorial work. For two 
months I worked at the table from eight p.m. till three a.m. 
(when they go to press) in the Rue du Louvre, in the ex- 
cellent company of Frost, Smith, Gribble, Par slow, Foug- 
ner, O'Connor and others, including a French gargon-de- 
bureau called Fatty, who fetched us what we wanted in the 
way of pads to write on, encyclopaedias, French and Eng- 
lish dictionaries, the Nobility and Gentry, and so on. 

A most amusing office. Everybody swears fit to shake 
the walls down. But hard work all the time. No one 
leaves the office between the hours of 8 p.m. and 3 a.m. A 
boy goes out at 10 p.m. and again at 12 midnight to fetch 
in drinks and sandwiches if you order them. 

Parslow has bottles of wine and Vichy water and nuts 
and bags of fruit, etc., spread all round his part of the table 
— like a fortification to prevent the editor-in-charge from 
seeing whether he is asleep, or from following too closely 
the details of his method of work. 

Frost snores again and again. "Wake up, Frost !" roars 
the editor-in-charge. But I can answer for it that Frost's 
pen never stopped writing when he was asleep. I was next 
to him, so I saw. The only difference was that his pen 
wrote strange and unintelligible hieroglyphics during its 
master's sleep, which had to be corrected when the latter 
woke. 

Perhaps I might here quote an angelic song which was 
composed for the "Livre d'Or" by the Poet Laureate of the 

96 

BBBBfll 



office. In this song one is supposed to hear the editor-in- 
charge issuing his directions to the individual members of 
the night staff : 

STEVENSON'S SONG. 

Now, gents, I want some copy, quick, so push the stuff 

along. 
Well, what's the matter, Parslow, have you struck a some- 
thing wrong? 
The office-boy will pass the blood-red Gotha if you shout. 
But if you cannot verify — well, simply cut it out. 
Say, Gribble, get a move on ; I've a Webster here for you. 
O, Frost don't go to sleep just yet, there's lots of work to 

do— 
You're not asleep? Why, dash you, I distinctly heard you 

snore ; 
Come, let me have that copy, for I can't wait any more. 
How goes it, Fougner, eh? Ca biche? (A voice responded, 

"Fine.") 
Why won't you blot your copy. Frost, you — (phrase that 

ends in "swine"). 
No, Gribble, no ; we do not *'lunch" upon the Continent ; 
No, sir, you did not alter it, though such was your intent. 
O'Connor, please remember this : we "stop," we do not stay. 
Tiens, Frost ; what was that monosyllable I heard you say : 
You're making sense of Stanhope ? Well, you have a good 

excuse, 
So open wide the safety valve and let off some abuse. 
We "pass" our time, we do not "spend"; I've mentioned 

that before. 
Say, Smith, you've been a "Herald" man for fourteen years 

or more, 
And yet you let "His Royal Highness" every time go 

through. 
And not a slip is numbered — oh, you are a corker, you ! ! 
On Sonne! On sonne, you something swine. Where's Fatty 

gone to now? 
He moves about as quickly as a paralytic cow. 
What's this? more copy? Oh, my God! The make-up's 

gone to hell. 
And where we're going to put the stuff I'm d d if I 

can tell. 
So hustle, everybody, look, it's nearly half-past two. 
And, Bingham, shout for help if you have more than you 

can do. . . . 
(Exit suddenly into the composing room.) 
I suppose if you come to think of it, it is because there 

07 



are such men as the editor-in-charge that the world keeps 
alive at all. 

He drove us like a team-master drives his team over 
rough ground — with a frolicking song for all, a touch here 
and there of the whip for the lazy ones — and so the great 
paper came out at 3.30 and we went home to our beds in 
the dawn. 

A brief explanation as to the instructions contained in 
this song. The word "spend" is taboo on the "Herald." 
You must say "pass" instead. So-and-so is "passing" his 
honeymoon, or "passing" his holidays. 

The word "stay" is taboo. You must say "stopping" at 
an hotel, not staying. Sort of faint allusion to a pair of 
lady's is, I suppose, objected to. 

The word "rich" is tabo. You must never say a "rich," 
always a "wealthy" American. 

The word "motor-car" is taboo. Use the word "auto- 
mobile" instead. 

"Lift" is taboo. Use the word "elevator" instead. 

"Breakfast." Bar that word on the Continent and say 
always "dejeuner." 

"Late" (as "late President," etc.) is taboo. Use the 
word "Ex." Thus: "Ex-convict," "Ex-President." 

"Goods train," taboo. Use "freight train" instead. 

Never use the word "lady." Say invariably "woman," 
and thus avoid odious comparisons. 

"Sail," as far as ships are concerned, is taboo. Ships 
don't sail. They "steam." ("What does a balloon do?" 
asked Frost one day.) 

REBELLIOUS THUNDER CONTRADICTS 
"HERALD'S" WEATHER PROPHET, y 

Nature Revolts as Premature Barometer Readings. 

I have omitted to mention one of the most amusing things 
in connection with the "Herald." That is, the Weather 
Service. This is arranged on a very exacting footing, as 
Mr. Bennett considers himself an authority on weather and 
likes to make, as the French say, "La pluie et le beau temps." 

I shall never forget Stevenson reading aloud to us one 
night one of those remarkable documents that came down 
by special messenger from the Champs Elysees while we 
were all seated round the table. 

The usual rush was going on, the cable machines were 
ticking. Smith was struggling with a finicking fashion arti- 
cle — ^he wore that *'up against it" expression which I have 

98 



hit off to a tee in the accompanying sketch; Fougner was 
editing Pierre Veber's dramatic critique on a first-night at 
the Bouffes Parisienne, and things were generally hum- 
ming when: 

"Now, gents, silence all, please!" rang out the voice of 
S — V — n, "while I read you the Commodore's latest: 

"In to-day's paper it was stated that the barometer was 
rising, and the weather was unsettled. What does this 
mean ? With a rising barometer I will have fine weather !" 

A roar of laughter went up. And Fougner, whose turn 
it was to write Paris weather that night, went out with a 
grim, determined look, and "took a turn round the block," 
as the "Herald" saying has it, to see the sky at midnight. 
On his return he wrote, as usual, the following portentous 
words : 

"At three o'clock this morning the sky was clear. The 
day had been hot, and night brought no cooling breeze." 

That was written at midnight ; but the "Herald" prophet 
always assumes that there will be no change in the weather 
between 12 and 3 a.m. 

The words were duly set up in type and printed. 

But lo ! at 3 a.m. a curious sound was heard upon the 
roofs and windows of the editorial den. 

Can that be rain? 

Fougner shuddered visibly. 

It was not only rain. A peal of thunder rent the air. 
Gigantic swords of lightning flashed across Paris. The 
dead must have been awakened in their graves. 

But note the majesty and power of the Press. 

Astonished Parisians and others who had been awakened 
in the night by the deluge, read in their favourite American 
paper that : 

"At three o'clock this morning the sky was clear. Night 
brought no cooling breeze." 

Strangest of all, the Commodore never spotted it and 
Fougner lived to thank his lucky stars ! 



It seems that the American First Nighter, who was for- 
merly one of us in Paris, is now getting popular in London. 
This is a sound, tall, hearty American man who, formerly, 
I believe, brought out the Sunday edition of the "Herald" 
(some 100 odd pages) in America. He used to come in to 
our Paris office with his copy at night-time, and sometimes 
sat down at the table with us and wrote out his stuff and 
put a seven-head to it, with the rapidity and precision of an 
expert Yankee journalist, who can fit a starting cap ("cha- 

99 



peau/' as the French call it) to the dullest story in the 
world. He wolud call for a bottle of beer and ignoring a 
glass ''drink from the fountain source" like one inspired. 

Some of his best work was contributed gratis to the 
"Open Letter" column. "That's the proper spirit!" sang 
out the editor-in-charge, when this great muscular man 
swang into the office at midnight and flung down two or 
three sheets of "Open Letter" column copy signed with the 
mystic "Manhattan." 

And now he has crossed the Channel and sends in regu- 
larly tons of cable over the name of "American First 
Nighter" — that name before which the "Long-haired Lon- 
don critics" tremble and perspire. 

DEDICATED TO BUSTER BROWN. 

Lud ! I am tired. Pass me the comic section of the "New 
York Herald." Buster Brown is up in a balloon this week. 
God bless his happy soul. Tige is winking like fun. 

It had to do with a fireman last week, who said he was 
hoping that rain — or something would come down to cool 
the weather a bit. It was Buster Brown who came down 
the sliding pole on his head just at that moment. 

Buster is too young to be punished by the police. Be- 
sides, he can run so fast. Even Tige is sometimes sur- 
prised at the way Buster can run when circumstances force 
him to it. 

Buster is, in American language, "a sport." He never 
runs till after the event. But then he runs real fast. You 
see he has to get home quick, before he forgets the thoughts 
that he wants to write down on that blackboard which con- 
tains the summary and conclusions drawn from the event. 

Of course Tige can run fast too. But that is natural to 
him. How is it that little Buster can possibly keep up, and 
even out-distance him? ^' 

My friends, the truth is that Buster is no ordinary child. 
If he were, he would have been killed long ago by one of 
the fool-men he has made fun of. 

Buster Brown is a living example of bounce and go, and 
Tige is always there too, like a faithful Boswell, following 
after his juvenile Johnson. 

I am so awfully glad to see, as week succeeds week, that 
Buster grows no older. It would be such a calamity, a pub- 
lic calamity, if Buster grew up and got wise and stupid and 
became a rich oil or steel or pork king or something. Tige 
would never be able to bear it. It is that young Buster that 
we all love. Because we were young once and we would 

100 



have been glad to do all the wicked things Buster did, if 
we only had a chance. 

All the world would rise up as one man if anyone tried 
to lay hands on Buster. But Tige is looking after that. 

"Who is this Bennett?" said a Frenchman to me the 
other night, while we were sipping our benedictine after 
dinner in the Cafe de Paris. 

"Why," I answered, "the man who left a thousand-franc 
note on the table in this very restaurant as a tip for the 
waiter. Only one out of thousands of similar freaks in- 
vented by his fertile imagination as an advertisement for 
his widely-read newspaper." 

This, also, is the newspaper proprietor who rewards his 
contributors for any specially brilliant "coup" or for any 
article which takes his fancy as being worthy of commenda- 
tion, by sending them a free order to go and get a suit of 
clothes at his own tailors. This explains how Oppler met a 
Berlin correspondent of the "Herald" who was not remark- 
able for his personal appearance and the cut of his clothes, 
arrayed suddenly in faultless evening dress one night in the 
Hotel Bristol: black braid down trousers, miles and miles 
of black silk, against which flashed by contrast the brilliant 
diamonds (?) on his shirt-front. "What's up, old man?" 
said Oppler. 

"Had a letter from Bennett with order to visit his 
tailor — acknowledgment of my article on "Germany's For- 
eign Policy" — so I just went along and got decked out like 
this." 

But another man, who was in Paris at the time when he 
received a similar mark of favour, was less easy to please. 
He had written something very good for the paper and 
when he received notice of his reward he regarded it as an 
insult. He happened to be in no need of new clothes at the 
moment, even those bearing the hall-mark of accurate cut 
afforded by Bennett's private tailor. But he also happened 
to know a number of hard-up impecunious students who 
were friends of his in the Latin Quarter. To each of these 
he gave the address of Bennett's tailor, saying: "Go along 
there and order a good pair of trousers." 

Bennett received the bill for about twenty pair of trou- 
sers. "What!" he cried, "is this man then a centipede!" 

But the truth leaked out and the clever writer was asked 
to send in his resignation, which he willingly did, having an- 
ticipated this request. 

This is also the man who calls all his foreign correspon- 
dents by the parts of a dog's body. The Berlin correspon- 
dent received invariably telegrams from Bennet addressed 

lOI 



"Dog's Tail, Berlin." The Norwegian correspondent is 
"Dog's Leg," the London correspondent, "Dog's Eye," etc. 



And who that has lived in Paris has not heard of Ben- 
nett's owls? I have at home envelopes from the man bear- 
ing every description of owl as crest, and very pretty ones 
too. This is a pleasant enough conceit and one in which I 
find myself entirely "d'accord" with this stern, dyspeptic 
man, for my grandfather's crest is an owl and the Witten 
family are inscribed in the heraldry book under this crest. 

The gold owl on Bennett's large blue envelopes, which he 
uses when returning articles to you, is a majestic bird in 
every sense. Standing clear forth from the surface of the 
paper, it is as fine as a setting sun on a black-clouded hori- 
zon. 

The owl is his favourite amongst all birds. 

This also is the man who, finding that the fast ii o'clock 
train from Paris to Trouville was discontinued by the rail- 
way authorities, owing to small receipts, profits not being 
sufficient to warrant the running of this particular train, 
offered to pay the difference on days when the company lost 
by the running of the empty train, so that he himself, who 
was fond of going to the Trouville races, might have his 
favourite train down there when he wanted it, because he 
hated getting up early to catch the 7.30 a.m. The fast train, 
therefore, continued to run the same as usual, though Ben- 
nett was sometimes the only passenger. An example of 
lordly egotism and contempt of economy which is worthy 
of remark by those afflicted with miserly instincts. 

Damn the expense ! 



This is the man who sent a wire to a New York jour- 
nalist of note, who, feeling himself summoned by the irre- 
sistible force and magnetism of Bennett's almighty dollar, 
left his happy home, crushing two collars hastily into a can- 
vas bag, and fled for Europe. 

"Come over into Europe and see me," said the telegram ! 
What magic promise, what dazzling hopes of preferment 
were not contained in these simple but sweeping words ! 

Throughout the journey and while the cradle of the deep 
rocked the mighty thousand-tonner, and the many horse- 
powered engines of the twin-screw leviathan rattled and 
sang, one phrase only echoed through the mind of the jour- 

102 



nalist. He read and re-read the telegram received from 
Bennett, dated Avenue des Champs Elysees, Paris. 

At last the great ship arrived, and in due course the jour- 
nalist landed in Europe and reached the Paris platform. 

No taximetre could quickly enough convey him towards 
the Arc de Triomphe. However, when he called at the 
house, he was informed that Mr. Bennett was out, or other- 
wise invisible. 

He went and fixed up at an hotel and there remained. 

Time passed. Day after day he called, in irreproachable 
attire, and asked to see Mr. Bennett, sending up his brand- 
new cards. But Mr, Bennett was strictly invisible. 

At last, one day three weeks later, he was shown into the 
sacred presence. He stood, hat in hand, while the pro- 
prietor of the great newspaper never even looked up from 
his writing. At length said Bennett : 

"What are you doing here?" 

"I came in answer to your telegram," said the journahst, 
showing the identical missive. 

''Waal, you'd just better go back again, I reckon," replied 
the autocrat. 

And back the journalist went. 

No doubt his expenses were paid from the Paris office. 
But the occasion had passed for his services, or Bennett 
had forgotten the reason of his summons. It was not for 
him to enter into explanations with a subordinate from the 
other side of the herring-pond ! 

Even dear old Oppler of Berlin had a similar experience. 
Wire arrives, "Come and see me in Paris." Arrival of 
Oppler. Delayed interview, but finally Oppler gets into the 
presence. He, having been correspondent for the "Herald" 
for many years, takes the liberty of sitting down while 
Bennett continues writing, without even lifting his head. 

At last he looks up. "Ah, it's you! Tell me in a word 
the political situation in Germany." 

Oppler, perfectly versed, spouts it all like a lesson. 

"Right, that will do," interrupts the autocrat. "You can 
draw your expenses and go back. Pass another week in 
Paris, first, if you like." 

Charming situation of Oppler. All ended happily. He 
could have equally written in a few pages and posted the 
remarks he had just been called upon to make. 

Lastly, and with emphasis, this is the man who, finding 
Montesquiue, ancient outside editor of the "Herald," sitting 

103 



scribbling out his article alone in the Rue du Louvre edi- 
torial offices of the Continental edition of the "New York 

Herald" one afternoon No! I can't end that sentence! 

Let's begin again : 

One afternoon Mr. James Gordon Bennett took it into 
his head to pay one of his rare visits to the Rue du Louvre 
editorial offices of the Continental edition of the "New 
York Herald" (that gets it).* And finding an unknown 
man sitting inside all alone scribbling an article on the sacred 
editorial table, Bennett, who was certainly "ripe," as the 
French say, if not actually feeling "rotten" — Bennett de- 
manded at once, in stentorian tones: "And who the devil 
are you?" 

The unfortunate Montesquieu, never having seen the 
proprietor of the "Herald" and not recognising his august 
majesty, instantly replied (annoyed at being interrupted in 
his labours) : 

"And who the devil are you?" 

Snatching a large ink-pot from the table, Mr. Bennett, 
without adding a word of explanation, flung it at the head 
of his unfortunate sub-editor, whom he evidently regarded 
as an impertinent intruder, a rank outsider, a man search- 
ing domicile — a person sheltering himself from the storm 
and the rain — in a word — an impostor lacking habitation 
and a "loque humaine." 

The ink-pot flew, thus far doing its duty and obeying the 
immutable laws of motion — which is a paradox — but the 
worthy missile missed its mark and went flying through the 
office window and struck full on the noble head of a slum- 
bering cocher, whose cab was drawn up just outside the 
"Herald" offices in the Rue des Deux Ecus ! 

Waking instantly from his agreeable torpor, the purple- 
faced Jehu clambered hastily from his box and, rushing into 
the offices of the "Herald," his head streaming with ink, 
confronted in all his burlesque wrath the two meji who 
were disputing their identity vigorously enough in the in- 
terior of the office. 

Montesquieu, seeing this inky apparition rush — surgir — 
upon the scene, simply pointed to Bennett, yelled at the 
cocher: "There's the man who did it," and, turning, fled, 
leaving Mr. Benett alone with that weird representative of 
labour and democracy, the ink-stained cocher. 

* Serious interruption ! "Le nomme" Parslow arrives at this mo- 
ment to say that this is all wrong. That the incident happened 
long before the Rue du Louvre offices existed. That it took place 
in the Avenue de I'Opera office of the "Herald," and that the man 
concerned was not an outside editor of the "Herald'* at all. What 
does it matter? Get out, Parslow! 

104 



Capital faced labour; but the language of the cocher 
proved victorious. Pouring out an uninterrupted stream of 
such expressions as only a cocher knows how to make use 
of, the good man, not listening to Mr. Bennett's explana- 
tions and not seeing in him anything else than the offender 
who had thrown the ink-pot, not recognising his title as 
proprietor nor any other of his claims to indulgence, de- 
manded instant pecuniary satisfaction for ink-stains and a 
bruised forehead. Mr. Bennett settled the matter hand- 
somely and the coachman, pocketing a bank-note, went off 
well satisfied with his afternoon's work ! 

TWILIGHT SICKNESS.* 

O, if I could be ill, 

To lie quite still and still 

In a room filled with sweet flowers — 

To hear a grandfather's clock 

Ticking with slow, wise knock 

And chiming the hours. 

Oh, if I could be ill 

And forget all the years and their sorrow — 

Have no thought for the past 

Nor care too much for the morrow. 

Only to He quite still 

With the pillows under my head. 

And Nurse, like a silent shadow in white, 

In her chair at the foot of my bed. 



* The above poem, previously to its publication in the "New 
York" Herald," passed through the hands of the proprietor of that 
paper, Mr. Gordon Bennett, who christened it "That Tired Feel- 
ing," and, said he, "Let all the sub-editors in the Rue du Louvre 
know, that I won't have them any longer plead sickness as an ex- 
cuse for absence without a doctor's certificate." Simultaneously 
with the publication of my poem, therefore, began the inauguration 
of a Reign of Terror in the "Herald" Paris office, during which a 
terrible fine of Frs.20 was inflicted upon every sub-editor who ar- 
rived at the Rue du Louvre Offices after the stroke of 8 p.m. Ask 
Parslow for full details. These fines accumulated from day to day, 
as he was almost invariably late, crushed him; and in the accom- 
panying illustration we see him pushing his furniture towards the 
Mont de Piete, so that he may raise sufficient money to pay his 
fines. 



105 

L 



CHAPTER XIV. 



THE COMING OF OPPLER. 



Just a word, kind friends, about that lump of well-dressed 
humanity called Oppler. 

His advent to Paris was a marvellous throwing out and 
disordering of all the systems. Nature stared aghast to see 
this portly man torn from his favourite table in the Hotel 
Bristol (Berlin) and chucked down among the night staff 
(''those kids," he called them) in the editor's room of the 
"Herald." 

He seemed a gentlemanly fellow, too, when first I was 
introduced to him. 

I was swotting away editing Capel Court and Wall Street 
Markets — to say nothing of the Paris Bourse in French, and 
tons of "Little News Notes" from the "Figaro," "Petit 
Parisien," etc., next to Frost, who was sleeping behind his 
spike — a very insufficient protection from the eagle eye of 
the editor-in-charge. 

Oppler came in, and was introduced to all of us one by 
one, and sat down at the table. 

His handwriting, to begin with, was admirable. I was 
astonished to see a foreign correspondent for a great news- 
paper write with so admirable a precision, and in such an 
elegant hand. 

Oppler told me afterwards that he was all shaken up, 
having had to leave Berlin on a sudden summons from the 
proprietor of the "Herald" and would I show him an hotel. 

Well, of course, I like an intelligent man to ask me this 
question, because there is only one hotel in Paris that I can 
recommend, and that is — our Monasterial. 

Just look at the photo of our salle-a-manger herewith. 

Why, as soon as I take a friend there and he sees the 
coloured windows looking on the garden, the great vaulted 
halls and corridors, the sweet serenity and quietude of the 
whole place, he forgets that I am there, in his hurry to take 
a room. 

"All this suits me exactly," are his first muttered words, 
after two hours of unpacking. 

loQ 



"Well, then — come down to dinner," said I to Oppler. 
And he came, in all his war-paint. 

A married man — you could tell it at a glance. All his 
collars the same size and carefully marked with his own 
name — not like mine — some marked "Farrell" and others 
which belonged to my brother when his neck was the same 
size as mine. 

Then his shirts. All one colour. Not some blue, others 
white, the rest pink. 

Oppler was given quite a big room; I believe, though I 
never saw it, on the floor below mine, but he soon moved 
upstairs to the top floor, because there was a room next to 
mine. And he said, "I prefer to be next to you. You can 
run in with some boiled eggs in the morning; and put some 
'Tauchnitz' editions in my room, will you, old fellow?" 

You see how friendly we were getting. 

Why, that poor soul missed his home and his wife and 
his dogs, here in this great maelstrom of Paris. 

And I tell you, friends, when I found the other day a 
slab of the best butter, wrapped carefully in a drawer of 
Oppler's empty room — I could scracely throw it away. 

We were chums, without a doubt. To begin with, here I 
had a man evidently accustomed to live well and to mix with 
the highest Society in Berlin. He was a little exacting al- 
ways, for he was accustomed to have things of the best, and 
even in a first-class restaurant here in Paris he would turn 
crusty and begin to find fault with the service or the food. 

The "Herald" had not treated him stingily for the last 
fifteen years or so that he had acted as their special corre- 
spondent at Berhn. He was a perfect library of experi- 
ences. 

I took him, for preference, down to Establie's Restau- 
rant, in the Rue Bonaparte, just opposite the gates of the 
Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He liked this cheap, Bohemian res- 
taurant as a change from the gaudy, highly-gilt shows. 
Here he found the real element of Latin Quarter life — free, 
well-disposed, sociable, and void of bounders. On the walls 
of the restaurant were some interesting paintings of the 
Bal de 4-z Arts. 

Oppler came in the atelier of the Art School one day, as 
it was just across the road, and invited the massier and six 
others out to drink. 

He always spent his money freely, gave enormous tips to 
the poor waiters in this tiny restaurant, and was regarded 
as a heaven-sent benefactor. 

I will simply add that Oppler had (or was supposed by 
Bennett to have) written something concerning some Prince 

107 



in Berlin, which was published in the "Herald" and caused 
the German Prince annoyance. Oppler told me that he met 
the Prince, who was a personal friend of his and who said 
to him right away: "There was no possible harm in what 
you wrote, my dear Oppler, and we are perfectly good 
friends." 

At any rate Oppler was recalled to Paris by Bennett and 
told that "he had better undergo a period of training in the 
Rue du Louvre Editorial Office" — in other words he was 
committed to prison for correction. 

For, indeed, it was nothing more nor less than imprison- 
ment for this man, who came fresh from the liberty of his 
home in Charlottenberg and had been accustomed to dine 
night after night with a party of the leading foreign corre- 
spondents of the great newspapers. 

Transplanted to Paris, Oppler got sick of eight p.m. till 
three a.m. passed in doing next to nothing in a stuffy room 
where fourteen others were scribbling as hard as they could 
go, with beer and wine-bottles stuck in front of them and 
heaps of cable to edit. 

He appeared in my room one night, saying : 

"I was away from the office last night. Parsons, and I 
shan't go down to-night, for really I feel quite queer. These 
late hours, you know !" 

Certainly. And he went back once or twice more and 
then gave it up. 

"I will not sit there," he said. 

So we passed one day at Versailles, another in the picture 
galleries — a night in the Palais de Glace (where we met 
Gribble, who was with a lady who skated to perfection — 
admirable it was). Then we went to the Opera. 

All this time I was living on my Frs.300 which I had 
saved up. It slipped away terribly fast, but I saw much 
that was worth remembering. 

I used to worry Oppler terribly. You remember he was in 
the next room to mine. I was then writing a big article 
on "Tar Paving" and the scheme for relaying of the boule- 
vards of Paris and the roads in the Bois, and a great Inter- 
national Congress which was being organised by experts in 
Paris in connection with this question. It was an article 
that was chucked by the "Herald," but I sold it to a techni- 
cal paper in London. 

In the mornings I used to take this in and read a bit of 
it to Oppler. One morning, I shall never forget it, I had 
just carried his boiled eggs and hot milk in and I thought 
I would skim over the article for him to hear, as he was an 
expert on "Herald" style. 

108 



But the topic of tar-paving was such a dull one, and he 
had slept so badly that night (he was working till 3 a.m. at 
the time) that I noticed he was getting fearfully restless, 
plunging about and tossing from side to side, like a lion 
just before it is fed. 

Being fairly enormous in bulk, I was properly horrified, 
while in the midst of a very dry passage about the technical 
method of spreading tar, to see his eye fixed upon me with 
a ferocious aspect that passes description. 

From time to time his enormous fists grasped by handfuls 
the bedclothes, and he would plunge over on the other side, 
shaking the whole room. 

I never finished reading that article. I judged it not only 
considerate, but judicious to withdraw, and leave him alone 
with his hot milk. 

You have no idea how a small thing can work upon the 
nerves after seven hours' toil in the sub-editorial room in 
the Rue du Louvre. 

I annoyed Oppler on another occasion. We went to the 
Opera, that awful night when he had the hiccups. In a 
burst of generous enthusiasm while dining the previous 
night with Blum, the Yankee student — in Establie's Res- 
tarant, the Bohemian one — he offered Blum a seat for the 
following night, but when we went to Versailles for some- 
thing next day, took dejeuner under the trees there, and 
French notes were simply melting into thin air. 

So we judged it advisable to call it off, so far as a seat 
for Blum was concerned in the Opera. I paid for my own 
— it was a fearful fuss — cabs — waiting in cafes and getting 
change — no good seats left except ten francs apiece, Opp- 
ler startled out of his mind, and then subsiding into a sort 
of angry complaisance — a vexed acquiescence, and sulky 
resignation. 

We had just time to rush down and dine at Establie's 
and make our excuses to Blum. 

As luck would have it Oppler still had the hiccups, and 
he played them for all they were worth. It was a quiet and 
determined game. 

Blum was there, in what he calls his best. Oppler sat 
down to dinner, was seized, poor fellow, with an actual 
spasm of the complaint, told Blum he had quite given up 
the idea of going to the Opera, and would go home quietly 
to bed. If Blum lived in our direction, would he accept a 
lift home in our cab after dinner? "We are going straight 
to our hotel," added Oppler. 

Confound it, these lies are told every day in Society, and 

109 



ten francs was a big lump for Oppler to pay out for a man 
whom he had only met the day before. 

As for the offer of a lift home in our cab, naturally Opp- 
ler thought it was safe enough to make same, for I had 
told him that Blum lived right up at Montparnasse in the 
opposite direction. 

But Blum had us on toast He said: "Thanks! I will 
come your way. I am going by the Rou Drouot." 

It is true he had a friend there, but I think he wanted 
to know whether we were really going straight home, or 
whether we were going to slink off to the Opera on our 
own. 

The cab was hailed. In we got. Dropped Blum corner 
of Rue Drouot on the Boulevard des Italiens. The 
damned cocher went down the wrong turning with us, and 
we had to be seen by Blum, turning round suspiciously soon 
after he had alighted, but of course we got to the Opera 
House — ^brilliant night — ^Oppler was very satisfied. 

He went downstairs between the acts once, and I got sick 
of waiting for him. The bell rang for the rise of the cur- 
tain, and I re-entered our little box, without Oppler. 

He certainly was considerably upset when I met him be- 
tween the next acts. He said to me, "You idiot, I have 
been all over this damned building hunting for our box. 
Why did you leave me? I have seen every official in the 
building " 

He certainly looked hot, like a man who had lost his way 
in a forest. 

But all that was soon forgotten when I showed him the 
number of our box. 



Oppler was thoroughly good at heart, and actually spoke 
poetry down at Versailles. 

We got locked in the park late at night, watching the 
reflection of the moon in the long water. 

Oppler showed his passport, written in German, I be- 
lieve, to the officials at the park gates, after dark, and they 
laughingly let us out, though it was unintelligible to them. 

"This is God's own grass down here,'' said Oppler — 

"smell it — after that d d town!" And he pulled up 

handfuls of the dewy weed. 

Paris had taken him under her arm and given him a 
twirl round in the dance, and he felt a bit giddy. 

That hideous Olympia — which is about the only place 
where you can get a sandwich with a glass of Munich and 
some music after three in the morning, always turns me up. 

HIO , . , 



But Oppler undoubtedly found a firm friend in Tom 
the Guide, whose portrait I give here. Sometimes the Ber- 
Hn correspondent would slip away arm-in-arm with the old 
soldier, saying: 

''Take me to some quiet, small restaurant, Tom — order 
some decent grub, and let's forget we're in Paris !" 

One day, when funds had entirely failed, Oppler went 
without the sou to visit his friend Kluytmans, who came up 
to the hotel, and insisted on paying a forty-franc luncheon, 
and gave me a fine article on his new Dutch dirigible bal- 
loon. This article went in the "Herald" with photos. 

Then came the day when Oppler had to return to Ber- 
lin. Tom made a fearful noise, and came to the station 
with us in a cab, smelling of rhum-eau-de-seltz. 

I am sure that Oppler had tipped him handsomely. 

And so this great, good-natured man went back to Ber- 
lin, his wife, and his dogs. 



Ill 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE BISHOP. 



"Soup, potatoes, cocoa, toast, 
And flannel next your skin." 

My eldest sister, impregnated with the routine of the rec- 
tory, always expressed the formula of our home life in the 
above couplet, and I thought it rather clever in its concise- 
ness. 

The more pity that I never hear from Ella now — fallen 
a prey, perhaps, to some religious or anti-religious sect 
which forbids the exchange of letters between blood-rela- 
tions. 

It's rather a blessing in disguise, for letter-writing these 
days is a sad tyranny. 

What she meant to say was that at supper in the Rectory 
at North Waltham, where my father looked after the spirit- 
ual needs of the village for fourteen happy years, the menu 
on the kitchen slate for supper was generally the same 
(there's my hot milk boiling over in the monasterial room) 
— the same, and consisted of soup, with potatoes, then cocoa 
with toast, and father always advocated, I suppose, the 
wearing of flannel next your skin. 

So when I went to Paris, and just at the time when I 
was working on the night staff of the "New York Herald" 
(Continental Edition), Parslow got wind of the fact that 
Bishop Ormsby had arrived to take over the charge of the 
English church in the Rue d'Aguesseau. I had known 
for months before that a clergyman of the name of Ormsby 
was coming to replace the Rev. Dr. Noyes. I was then 
working for the "American Register," and the idea struck 
me that very probably Bishop Ormsby was the Rev. Orms- 
by I had known years before at Chislehurst, where my aunt 
lives. 

I thought to myself "All my difliculties are over now. 
Here is my old, staunch friend, that erratic Irishman, Orms- 
by, coming with his delicate wife and seven children, in- 
cluding the one who wears spectacles, and, of course, Mr. 
Ormsby will be meeting Ambassador Bertie and Lady Ber- 

112 



tie over the tea-table once every week and I shall get in- 
troduced to all that set and get a lay official position as 
under secretary of something which leaves me free to paint 
all the morning in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and pay all 
my debts at the same time out of the handsome appoint- 
ments I shall receive. 

Sure enough, Parslow went down to write up the in- 
auguration service and interview the Bishop for the "Her- 
ald." It was all arranged between the editor-in-charge and 
Parslow without my knowing, and I must say Parslow did 
it wonderfully, considering that he is a champion swearer 
on the night-staff in the Rue du Louvre — (ask Frost) — 
and not at all a church-going man. 

As it was, he was late for the Morning Service. 

He went to the Evenin^g Service, however, and came back 
to the office (though it was his night off that night) to 
write up his copy. 

"Why, Parslow, you look quite respectable to-night," 
shouted Archambault, as the rugged-bearded warrior en- 
tered, dressed in black with a clean collar. 

"Didn't the roof fall in?" screamed Fougner, who, with 
a green shade over his eyes, was editing Pierre Veber's 
dramatic critique in French. 

Next morning at 3.30 a.m. there was the Bishop's por- 
trait with one column, giving the texts preached on for 
Morning and Evening Service, and altogether a slap-up, 
juicy, religious article, smart as pins, and right in the 
"Herald's" style. 

All the swearing used in editing this column article and 
putting the Seven Head on it was neatly expunged. 

I went to see the Bishop a few days afterwards. 

He said it was a pity "that man from the 'Herald' " (poor 
Parslow — how are the mighty fallen !) didn't take the trou- 
ble to come to the Morning Service, as it was quite impos- 
sible for him, the Bishop, to remember what he had said at 
10 a.m., which Parslow required him to do at 9 p.m. after 
the Evening Service. 

But I could scarcely listen to what the Bishop was talk- 
ing about, because I was so astounded to find he was not the 
Ormsby I knew at all. 

That, however, seemed to be a matter of indifference to 
him, and he talked so agreeably and welcomed me so kind- 
ly, mind I go to church to-night at 8 p.m., by the way, that 
I actually showed him my sketch-book. 

"The Ormsby you knew," said he, "was the step-brother 
of my sister-in-law." 

Well, perhapsi the less said about him the better, I 

"3 



thought to myself. This Bishop Ormsby is the man of the 
hour. 

Bishop Ormsby, fresh from the Wilds of Honduras, was 
so kind to an outsider like me. I told him I was on the 
staff of the "Herald," and would try and get church 
notices in when he wanted it done, and he gave me his card 
and told me to come and see him and his wife when they 
were settled in Paris, 

It must have been two or three months later that I re- 
ceived a written invitation from him to come to dinner. 

There was no time to go to church first. I simply had 
to rush for my washing, borrow five francs from Smith 
for emergency expenses, and jump on the Metro. 

That sudden desire of mine to go to church first can only 
be compared to the death-bed repentance of a hardened 
sinner. 

Too late, my dear sir, too late. 

But after all, though I had never visited the Bishop's 
church in the Rue d'Aguesseau since he took charge (be- 
cause I am superstitious, and sometimes I have a strange 
horror of church, which I will explain another time, if I 
can), he was perfectly delightful, frank, hospitable. 

"I'm a bachelor to-night," said he. "My wife is in Lon- 
don. Let me introduce you to my only other guest, who 
is by chance a namesake of your's, and then we'll sit down 
to dinner — eh?" 

And that strange series of reminiscences that belongs to 
my father's rectory and to the days almost of childhood 
came rushing back. 

I remembered the rooks that woke us with their cawing 
at early morning, in the trees behind the rectory. The smell 
of hay was in my nostrils again. I heard the rush of the 
wicked sparrows and other winged thieves, as we opened 
the creaking door of the great, sun-baked kitchen garden, 
and all the hosts of feathered poachers flew away up from 
the netting over the strawberry beds and hid themselves 
again under the broad thatch that crowns the old stone wall. 

I remembered Dan Lewington, who gave me the largest 
potato I have ever roasted in my life, and who himself lived 
in the tiny thatched cottage down by the gates of the rec- 
tory; and the tennis parties, and church decorations — the 
long rambles through dewy woods to find the moss — that 
pure, rich moss — which was used for the font, and which 
looked so fine, with white lilies on it. 

The peace and quietness of our church on a Sunday 
morning, the colours on the wall, when the sun shone 
through the golden paintings on the windows. The great 



yew tree in the churchyard, which its own weight or the 
winter storms had spHt in twain, so that its enormous 
trunk was only bound together by a huge chain. 

All these recollections came crowding into my mind, to- 
gether with Tommy Giggs' tree, blasted by lightning on the 
road to Steventon ; the blind man, Enos, who rang the bells 
on Sundays and saints' days. Again I hear the tap of the 
stick along the country road and down the hill by the kitchen 
garden. The lovely twins, daughters of the squire at 
Steventon, and who rode so gallantly to hounds, bending 
gracefully under the interlacing of the branches, where the 
nut trees, beaded with dew, stood out black against the 
winter's sky, 

*'We talk'd : the stream beneath us ran. 
The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss, 

Or cool'd within the glooming wave; 

And last, returning from afar, 

Before the crimson-circled star 
Had fall'n into her father's grave. 

And brushing ankle-deep in flowers. 
We heard behind the woodbine veil 
The milk that bubbled in the pail, 
And buzzings of the honied hours." 



There are many people who cannot understand Tennyson, 
but Bishop Ormsby is one of those who love him, and we 
were on congenial ground at once. I only regret that I 
have left my complete edition of the poet's works in Lon- 
don, with so much else that is useful and ornamental. 

We had for dinner at the Bishop's — soup (good) ; pota- 
toes (but no cocoa and no toast). After soup, fish (good) ; 
white wine (excellent). After fish — I forget — some meat. 
I was talking about Lederkopf, where I and my brothers 
went to school, and the Bishop mentioned at once the name 
of the Rev. Rutty, the headmaster, and said he had two 
sons there. So we rushed off at that tangent and Tenny- 
son was forgotten for the moment. 

When I came to myself I was slowly eating an orange 
and had told a lot of secrets about my past life. 

The other guest, called Parsons, who was eating and 
talking most properly on the other side of the table, also 
chimed in. He had once carried round the bag in the Eng- 
lish church, but had been superseded and had a grievance 
against the former parson. 

. 115 - -j: 



It appears he had his views on the separation of Church 
and State. The Bishop asked him what they were. 

"A good thing for the Church," he repHed ; "because the 
people, having now to pay for the Church out of their own 
pockets will take more interest in it. And the clergy, look- 
ing to the people for their living, will take more interest in 
their congregations." 

A double blunder — false argument and lack of tact, I 
said to myself. For I was naturally listening. The Bishop 
spoke up, proudly, at once: "Well, the last-mentioned rea- 
son is not a very high one, is it?" 

But all that was nothing. Coffee in the study by a good 
log fire. Cigarettes ad lib. — liqueur. 

More rectory recollections. A little mild, diluted his- 
tory of our daily life in the ateliers of the Ecole des Beaux- 
Arts — the noise the students make while painting. 

The Bishop's experiences are different to mine, but he 
also has his troubles. The ambassador forgot to ask him 
to say grace on one occasion or something — I suppose the 
good old customs are dying out. 

Oh, happy and righteous evening, art thou, too, already 
numbered with the past? 

But look! What have we here? A living memento of 
the happy hours, in the shape of a sketch which I made of 
the Bishop, lounging in his chair by the log fire. It is al- 
most midnight. His eyes are closed. He has given me 
the requested permission to sketch. 

Now I must go to catch one of the last trains home on 
the Metro. 

I have no doubt that through my acquaintance with 
Bishop Ormsby, who is in with Ambassador and Ambas- 
sadress Bertie, I shall one day meet the King of England ! 

What sport! The great thing is not to liorrow money 
from all these people. ^^ 

My leaden franc weighs heavy on my mind, 
'Tis all that I possess, and of its kind 
Is useless if recipient be not blind. 

I shall doubtless pass it on a 'bus one day. I might even 
give it in the church collection to-night! New idea, as 
Frost would say, in his excellent staccato manner. 



ii6 



CHAPTER XVI. 



AMEXCO. 



These magic words stand for "The American Express 
Company" all the world over. I am not going to advertise 
unduly this lofty and high-minded concern, whose princi- 
ples are known to every client who expedites his potatoes or 
silk and cotton goods through its intermediary. 

From 9 a.m. till 7 p.m. I type like a slave on a Smith- 
Premier machine letters dictated both in English and 
French for this company, who make an effort to forward 
other peoples' goods safely from the Continent to America 
and vice versa. I say " make an effort," for in justice to 
the firm it must be said that everybody does their level best 
to ensure cases getting through ; but frequently they fall into 
the hands of the Douane, and then a long correspondence 
arises and as the dossier grows bigger and bigger, so the 
chances of the safe arrival of that case at destination grow 
smaller and smaller, and at last the miserable case disap- 
pears altogether from the scene, leaving only the enormous 
dossier of correspondence. It is sickening, both for the 
firm Amexco and for the shipper of the goods. I say noth- 
ing of the consignee. He wrings his hands and gnashes 
his teeth ; but the months roll on and no goods arrive. And 
the season passes and there is no longer any need for the 
samples which were sent him. The trade in that special 
line has died out. People don't buy fancy parasols in mid- 
winter (except for the Riviera), nor fur-lined coats in the 
heat of summer. 

I am not suggesting that every package sent by this - — 
company goes wrong! Many and many a package arrives 
safe in port, spite of shipwrecks, fires and the wily ma- 
noeuvres of railway servants who have not the fear of the 
Lord in their hearts. 

But — ah! those buts! — remember the poor man out at 
Havana, by name Soriano, who keeps on waiting for his 
cinematograph films. They arrive all right ; but the bills of 
lading which ought to have reached him through the post 
are always late ; so he has the pleasure of knowing that the 
cases are awaiting him in the Havana Douane, but he can- 

117 



not touch them because he has no bills of lading to present 
to the Customs authorities in order to make good his claim. 

Well, instead of discussing these disagreable subjects, I 
shall tell you about the staff. First of all, there is Bentz. 
He arrives a little late in the morning sometimes. Amus- 
ing, certainly, to see a man of thirty-five odd years, espe- 
cially a Frenchman, climbing up the staircase that leads to 
our office like a grey cat who has been on the tiles all night, 
fearful as he is of being nabbed by the manager, who will 
cry out to him, spoiling all the soft subterfuge: "Eh, bien, 
Bentz, il n'y a pas moyen?" 

This means that if Bentz does not arrive punctual on the 
stroke of 9 a.m. at this sacred office where I work, he will 
get the unleavened and unsophisticated sack. 

He has little to do, and pulls the wings from bluebottles 
on a sultry summer's afternoon and plays hide and seek on 
tiptoe with Rist, a bearded, short-statured Frenchman of 
forty, ugly as sin or a monkey, whose idea of ''making 
things hum" as the Americans deftly term it, is to run very 
fast up and down stairs, rattling his boots and banging 
doors as he goes through our office. The draughts he 
creates in my room are fearful. There are two swing 
doors which are never shut for more than five minutes, 
one behind me, and the other in front, and an open window 
at my side. I have had a chronic cold in the nose for eight 
months of the time during which I have laboured for this 
beautiful and high-minded firm, whose head offices, as you 
know, are in New York. They are too poor to pay me 
more than Fr.6o per week. 

I was mentioning Mr. Rist, who is so fond of the sound 
of his own voice that when he has nothing else to do, which 
is most of the time, he cries continually, "Alio, Alio!" at 
the telephone which connects him with Havre — just as the 
angels cry without ceasing "Alleluia V in the rent-free halls 
of Paradise. 

As this costs little and makes a great deal of noise, Rist 
cries fit to make the glass roof ring. He pretends, of course, 
to be communicating with Havre, but really he wants the 
manager to hear, from his private office upstairs, how hard 
he, Rist, is working for his living (which is considerably 
better paid than mine, because, as you know, those who 
shout loudest in this life are always the ones who succeed 
the quickest! That accounts, I suppose, for the noise in 
all great cities). 

I never cease typing, while the others are playing about 
trying to make believe that they are working, and not suc- 
ceeding at the farce either, while Agent Paroutaud dic- 

118 



tates fifty to sixty letters at lightning speed to me per day, 

in English and French equally ; while Piron, the chief cash- 
ier, dictates downstairs in French to me ; and Rist, the as- 
sistant-agent in English and French, the happy stenog- 
raphers in the traffic department down the passage are three 
to three managers, and get away punctually at six p.m. 
each night. I only hope Mr. Dalliba, manager at the Rue 
Scribe office, will arrive at having this page of my book be- 
neath his eyes.^ It will throw some light on a subject which 
has been puzzling him from a distance for some time, and 
that is, why his traffic department manager does not reduce 
his staff. 

I work for a French manager called Paroutaud, who has 
ten times the amount of correspondence to dictate daily that 
Mr. Smith, the traffic manager in the same office has. But 
as unfortunately Mr. Smith has a higher standing in the 
company that Mr. Paroutaud, Smith is in a position to 
order as many shorthand clerks as he likes to assist him in 
his work, while Mr. Paroutaud, wo has established a repu- 
tation for economy still struggles on with one shorthand 
clerk who has enough letters and other documents to type to 
keep him employed tapping on the machine for nine hours 
daily — an arduous task above all in the hot summer 
weather, when the whole force of the sun is reflected into 
my little office off the vast glass roof which covers the 
square hall below, where the pair-horse vans load and un- 
load their cargoes of heavy cases. Very often from June 
to September this little room up above is like a real furnace 
or a baker's oven. But all the same one must keep on 
typing all day, running out now and again to spend one's 
scanty salary on a glass of something with eau-de-vie and 
ice in it. 

And then each time one applies for a rise, after nine 
months in such a service, the word comes back from the 
head office of this great company that owing to the depres- 
sion of trade in the United States it is out of their power 
to give me an increase of five francs a week. This is about 
the same thing as if Mr. Rockefeller were to give orders 
that owing to his financial embarrassments he expected the 
servants to burn no fires during the winter or to collect any 
cigar stumps found about the house and bring them back 
to his study to be smoked over again. 

But this is not all. When it was found in Smith's de- 
partment that I was a fairly swift and able shorthand 
writer, both in English and French, stray agents belonging 
to Smith's traffic department, men to whom I had never 
spoken before, began to dribble gradually into my room 

"9 



and ask me just as a favour to take a few four-page letters 
in the midst of the rush of my ordinary work. They coolly 
announced that they had Mr. Paroutaud's authority to give 
me this extra work. Unfortunately there was no extra pay 
attached to these little services, but my reward arrived from 
another direction — the idle shorthand clerks belonging to 
Smith's department used to come in and flaunt their idle- 
ness before me. Niemans, especially, Smith's personal 
shorthand clerk, would arrive snapping his fingers with de- 
light to watch me working and to announce to me that ''he 
had not had one single letter to write that whole day and 
that Smith had just recommended him for a rise of Frs. 25 
per month," while my own application for a rise had been 
refused. "And," added Niemans, "it is only fair that I 
should have a rise, I have been here two years." 

The friendly Niemans did not, however, tell me these 
details all at once — il m'a menage un peu cette surprise. He 
first entered my room dancing and singing, snapping his 
fingers like a lunatic. When I asked him what was the 
matter be disclosed to me that his application for an increase 
of salary had been more successful than mine, while he was 
to remain in the same delicious state of complete idleness. 
Mr. Smith, however, always regarded me with considerable 
supicion, as those very often are regarded who have to 
bear the heat and the burden of the day. 

Then Raeburn. This strange mixture of Canadian and 
Cockney. We never knew really what to make of him. He 
is called the "assistant traflic agent," and persists through 
thick and thin in speaking French with such a terrible 
English accent you could cut it with a sharp knife. Poor 
Monsieur Paroutaud bears up bravely under the strain of 
listening to this weird French, for Monsieur Paroutaud, 
my manager, is a Frenchman born. It must, therefore, 
pain him to hear his maternal language "murdered," even 
more than it pains me. ^ 

"What ! You have got your hat on !" 

It was a Saturday afternoon at four o'clock when this 
phrase, burning with sarcasm, was flung at my otherwise 
defenceless head by Manager Paroutaud. I had dared to 
make preparation for departing for the afternoon, seeing 
that all the traflic department down the passage had "part- 
ed" two hours before. I was called to order pretty severely 
and told that "in future, sir, you will stay here on Saturday 
afternoons till 6 p. m. always." 

Alas, my hat ! 

I might give you a sketch of one day's thoughts during a 

120 



hard mail day of typewritng — no overtime ever paid for — 
not one sou during the year I remained there, but these 
thoughts cover such a wide range of trifles that you would 
be dismayed and bored. 

First, then (hammer, hammer, hammer on the hard, 
white keys), thoughts about Miss Peyter, the eternal best 
girl. What is she doing now, and where? The bill I owe 
at Chancery-lane Safe Deposit, London, for storage of my 
goods. When shall I succeed in paying it? (Hammer, ham- 
mer, hammer.) Whether I can afford to go to Versailles 
next Sunday and paint the shepherd. "Nous avons I'avan- 
tage de vous envoyer ci-inclus connaisement pour les caisses 
5,432-5,434, contenant des peaux — ^ — " What has become 
of Marthe Aubrey, the prettiest model? "Nous vous ferons 
remarquer que vous nous devez tou jours la somme de Frs. 

pour le magazinage des caisses ci-dessus, et nous 

prions d'agreer, Monsieur, nos salutations empressees." 
Whether I ought not to send five francs to Chapman, chief 
engineer of the Underground Electric Railways Company of 
London, Limited, from whom I borrowed this sum last 
time I crossed to that genial city. (Hammer, hammer, ham- 
mer.) "Nous avons I'avantage de vous aviser de la rentree 
de votre remboursment sur I'expedition H.A. 265, valeur 
Frs. 2,000 et nous tenons cette somme a votre disposition, 
contre presentation de cette lettre, et regu de votre part, de- 
duction faire de Frs. 0.35 de recepisse. Agreez, etc." 
Whether Boissard, massier of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 
thinks it is funny about that duel I threatened to fight with 
Miss Peyter's brother-in-law, and whether he doesn't think 
it still funnier that I don't yet pay up for my share of the 
patron's dinner, at which I drank so much good champagne. 

Whether it is possible to write a book on Paris in the 
office, using the office machine, after eight o'clock p. m., 
when I have finished my ordinary day's work. 

Conclusion: That on a salary of Frs. 250 a month in 
Paris it is utterly impossible to live in Paris and pay your 
debts. It means living strictly alone, without friends — for 
friends, both male and female, expect you at least to go 
with them to cafes and theatres sometimes and take your 
turn and pay your round of drinks. 

And talking about low, sweating salaries, what^ right, I 
ask, have Americans to come over here and exploit honest 
Englishmen who work for their living in Paris? Do they 
think that because we find ourselves on this side of the 
Channel we have all consequently been expelled from Eng- 
land, having been perhaps locked up in the prisons of that 
nation, and dare not return there; and therefore must and 

121 



shall accept the starvation wages offered by the American 
Express Company, and other half-bred concerns over here 
in this City? 

No, what they think rather is that, owing to the French 
law, which is a little difficult for an Englishman, they can 
easily escape their obligations to employes. We have a 
cassier, who is sixteen years of age and works till nine and 
ten o'clock at night without overtime money, doing the 
work of a man at a boy's salary, sans doute, without the 
knowledge of Mr. Dalliba, and that there are no organised 
Trade Unions or Courts of Appeal for British working men 
in this City of Paris. And that they can therefore do as 
they damned well like, and as they would not dare to do 
over there in America or England, where the weight of 
public opinion and the force of numbers forms a consider- 
able factor in the lives of the less rich of human beings. 

Niemans of course is a lucky dog. He is the other Eng- 
lish stenographer for the French and English correspon- 
dence in the freight office, but he belongs to the traffic de- 
partment, down the passage and is in with Smith, his boss. 
He, therefore, gets half-holidays given him. He is even al- 
lowed to be ill. And sometimes he gets sent out to visit 
clients. And even when he is locked in with the others he 
has little to do; sometimes, nay, often, nothing to do, and 
borrows my newspaper and goes away to the only quiet re- 
treat which is known in the office and where a person is at 
liberty at all times to lock himself away from the public 
gaze, and there he enjoys an absolute, if unsalubrious, 
quietude and reads the paper and smokes for half an hour 
together. He is incorrigibly idle. Niemans, the idle man, 
comes and flaunts his idleness in my face when I am over- 
worked, when, with bent brow, I stagger on under the load 
of dictated letters, double extra copies, expenses, and all 
the idiotic rigmarole and red-tape of a company which is 
inspired by the one idea that it is good to heap up detail and 
to complicate simplicities, and would rather spend Frs. 25.00 
in postage stamps and correspondence than lose a debit of 
Frs. 5.50. This has actually been done scores of times, in 
correspondence extending in one case over one year on one 
trifling matter of Frs. 5 which was in dispute. 

The concierge's cat comes as a relief. One of the bright 
spots in all this misery is the concierge's cat, which dwells 
with its mistress in the passage that leads in to our freight 
office. She, at least, does not work too much. She does 
not understand any French and always flies when she hears 
my accent. I was told that somebody had given her a fright 
a long time ago. 

122 



Another ''light upon the dark waters" is the "Cafe Oppo- 
site." You would call it a "bar." As all lives, even the 
dullest, receive from Fate their bright embroideries of 
Chance (that which the French call "La Veine") so here we 
stand face to face with the Cafe Opposite and its genial 
proprietor. (See sketch.) He will never read these words, 
so I can lay on the flattery as thick as I like. At the mo- 
ment of writing I do not even know his name. I know, 
however, that he gives me unlimited credit (remind me to 
mark down the amer picon, citron, I had half an hour ago 
— most suave of aperatifs !) for drinks, and even lends me an 
occasional five francs when I am hard up for "cinq balles." 

Then, from M. Allaume's room — he is the chief book- 
keeper — one can catch a glimpse of a small private garden, 
with trees in it. I sometimes go and stand there so as to 
escape for five minutes from the burning fiery furnace of 
my own room in summer, but . 

"Have you any more letters, Mr. Parsons?" There you 
are, you see, impossible to write this stuff any more. The 
question rings in my ears. The manager is anxious to go. 
I have type-written from 9 a.m. till 7 p.m. without a stop ex- 
cept for lunch. In the morning I felt fairly fresh. But af- 
ter midi it began — a sort of stale repetition of thoughts to 
the accompaniment of a constant hammer — hammer — ham- 
mer on the keys of the little machine. Then a bitter taste 
comes into one's mouth — and one dreams of the rectory 
garden. 



But note, gentle reader, where injury is added to insult, 
and how we poor puppets, held in the iron grip of the 
Amexco tongs, are grilled over the fire of their impatience 
to wax rich on the sufferings of their employes ! 

On joining the sublime firm I had, like all other candi- 
dates for this favour, to present unimpeachable testimonials 
covering a period of ten years, all of which were taken up 
and verified. I had to supply the names of four personal 
friends who are not relatives and who would guarantee in 
writing as to my private character. I had to give the pro- 
fession and Christian or baptismal names of my parents 
(my grandparents narrowly escaped from this ordeal, peace 
to their honourable bones). 

I have before me at this moment of writing the docu- 
ments which I had to fill up and sign in order to be passed 
as an employe at Frs. 60 a week. One column of questions, 
entitled "Personal Description," demands the colour of my 
eyes, the shape of my nose, any marks that I may have, 

123 



such as tattooing or old scars (gained, I suppose, in rough 
and tumble fights with the police). 

Another column of questions traces my antecedents for 
nearly a quarter of a century, and forbids me to allege as 
reason for leaving any firm where I have previously worked 
that I gave notice to leave of my own free will. This is not 
counted as an excuse for having left a firm. There exists 
apparently a sort of freemasonry between all capitalists, 
which makes it impossible for a man to leave their employ 
of his own free will. He must wait till he is given the sack ! 
If he left at all, the reason must be, that he was given the 
sack. And if he does not get it at a convenient moment, he 
must wait till he does get it. 

Finally, this inquisitorial document comes to a close with 
this crowning paragraph, which conveys a sense of the com- 
plete autocracy of the firm : 

In case of an accident occurring to me while in the employ 
of the company, I hold them absolutely free, and my signature 
hereto attached constitutes their entire discharge from all lia- 
bility, etc. 

Even though, working as I do in the freight office, a case of 
a couple of tons' weight may fall on my head at any mo- 
ment, or I may be jammed in the entrance door by a restive 
horse attached to one of the company's vans. The very 
camionneurs themselves are bound under the same engage- 
ment to bring no claim for compensation against the com- 
pany for whom they work in case of accidents sustained in 
the course of their daily work. 

But enough ! The great fact remains that, having bound 
me with all these signatures, I am treated with suspicion by 
those very managers who are themselves swindling me out 
out of my time and money, who forget to pay me for the 
overtime work, and who give me the work of three men so 
as to keep down their expenses. They rob me of my time 
and health, under the very shadow of the law, and by means 
of "legal" documents, duly signed and stamped, they place 
me in the impossibility of retaliating and paralyse all reci- 
procity by their one-sided contract. 

En plus, they deduct annually a certain amount from my 
small salary in case I should run away from the firm owing 
them something. In other words, I am "bonded" in $1,500 
and pay out of my own pocket the premium of Frs. 11.55 
to safeguard my employers from all risks. The risks that 
I run of losing my health, eyesight, and intellect in their 
poisonous little room where I work are not covered or safe- 
guarded in any way. 

124 



P.S. — Throughout this article I must not be taken as ac- 
cusing Monsieur Paroutaud of any harshness. On the con- 
trary, he was frequently considerate. As one of the agents 
of the company, however, he was obliged to enforce their 
disagreeable and unjust rules. "M.R.P." — "Many Rolling 
Parrots." — I shall never forget my chief's initials, and shall 
recollect with affection this old phrase that I concocted in 
order to commit them to memory; for these initials had to 
be typed on the lower left-hand corner of each letter he dic- 
tated. 



i^.S 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 



MORET-SUR-LOIGN, 
September 20, 1908. 

A few days ago the manager in the office where I grind 
gave me a week's holiday, and I made all necessary prepara- 
tions to quit Paris and visit Saint Malo on the Coast of 
Brittany. 

As, however, all the way down the road from the office 
of the hotel to the station I met creditors more or less 
pressing, I arrived at the station (Gare de Montparnasse) 
with very little money to speak of, but plenty of luggae for 
a week's holiday, c'est-a-dire, an easel, a heavy box of oil 
colours, a large canvas and a weighty valise. 

At the station, where I arrived just in time to catch the 
8.35 train, the porter told me abruptly that no such train 
existed and that the next train to St. Malo was eleven 
o'clock, and was first and second class only. 

I excused myself. 

Third class is my ticket. 

"However," he said, "the 8.35 train which you have come 
to catch starts from the Gare des Invalides, which is far 
from here." 

This, I said to myself, gives pause ! Perhaps I will not 
go to St. Malo at all. It is true there was an afternoon and 
evening train, both third class, from the Gare des Invalides. 

But the question of luncheon arises. I prefer to lunch in 
Paris, and to my great regret I find, after having lunched, 
that I have eaten up part of the price of my ticket. There 
no longer remains the necessary reserve of funds. 

I also dine in Paris and reflect with some comfort that I 
shall not now be able to catch the night train to St. Malo, 
which after all is a sleepless sort of journey. 

I return home and go to bed. 

My luggage is always at the consigne de la gare. I shall 
no doubt raise some cash to-morrow and go down the line 
with it. 

After all, what is there to hurry about? 

To-morrow breaks a splendid autumn morn. I feel some- 

126 



what at a loss, as all my useful things, such as soap and 
brush and comb, are at the Gare des Invalides. 

I go out, however, and eat up some more of the price of 
my ticket. 

The following day I abandon St. Malo. 

I have the good fortune to raise some extra funds, and 
as I have been told that Moret is a charming village, full of 
spots for painting and only sixty-two kilometres from Paris 
and eleven kilometres the other side of Fontainebleau, I call 
at the Gare des Invalides, take out all my luggage, and jour- 
ney by auto-taxi to the Gare de Lyon. At four p.m. I arrive 
at Moret. A shaky pair-horse omnibus conveys me to the 
Hotel Chevillon. The patron seems indifferent whether I 
take a room or not, but condescends to give me one on the 
ground floor at seven francs per day. 

It is all very charming. The river flows just by the edge 
of the garden. The strain of the town relaxes. The gargon, 
sleek and polite, brings me my chocolate by the water's edge 
at eight o'clock. I like to see him descending by rustic 
paths and green avenues, carrying the silver tray in his 
hands and inclining himself this way and that to avoid the 
caress of the downward-trailing foliage. His footsteps, 
"loud on the stone and soft on the sand," have something 
of enchantment in then, when I appreciate the fact that he 
serves me alone, as there are no other guests in the hotel 
save and except two ladies whom I have not yet seen. The 
summer season is over and the rush from the town has 
ceased. All the better. A little individual attention after 
the wholesale manner of being served in the big City restau- 
rants does not come amiss — especially in a garden the banks 
of which are bathed by a broad river in which tall trees are 
mirrored. 

At twelve midday I clean my brushes and join the ladies 
at luncheon, still by the water's edge. My thoughts com- 
pose themselves a little. I regret that I did not know of 
this place before. One of these ladies is very charming — 
a dainty Parisienne, with a very ugly and expensive little 
dog, which wears bells round its neck and barks at male 
strangers. 

All this time I hear a far-off cry — a pathetic, plaintive 
sound it is, which contains great weariness, like a sigh of 
nature, yet has a sweetness of its own. 

This is the cry of the drivers of the donkeys who haul 
the barges up the canal. The lock is close to the gates of 
our hotel. I find myself looking down into the lock in the 
afternoon. There is something allegorical of life going 
on. A quiet rising of waters in the lock and a noisy falling 

127 



of waters in the lower pool. The law of compensation is at 
work and the donkeys are nibbling grass and switching at 
the flies instead of towing the barge. Presently the barge 
goes away and as it disappears round a bend of the poplar- 
lined canal I feel a sort of sorrow, as though I had known 
the craft and its occupants all my life. 

The next afternoon I walk across a bridge and visit the 
village and, passing down the hollow of a dark tunnel that 
leads under the ancient houses, I find myself at the riverside 
beside the roar of a cataract and the beatings of the flat 
wooden spades that the washerwomen use as they clean the 
linen all day on the flagstones by the running water. 

These two sounds, the roar of the water and the sound 
of the beating of the flat wooden spades in the open air, also 
penetrate into the mind and drive out a lot of musty, con- 
fused ideas that come from the town. 

And at night I stood at seven o'clock on the heights above 
the village and saw gigantic arms of golden clouds stretched 
out over the earth like the arms of one pronouncing a bless- 
ing. 

Then the grasshoppers on the splendid, lonely hill made a 
mighty sound of hammers, and the huge, long-haired cater- 
pillar, clothed in golden fur, unrolled himself and climbed 
perilously across the blades of grass. 

Gradually the village and the river and the canal faded 
away out of sight. Only along the horizon of the hills a 
line of crimson promised a brilliant morrow. 

Just as the roaring cataract above the mill, by the bridge 
that leads into the village (by the ancient stone gateway), 
had carried away half my bitter thoughts, so the remainder 
fell into the vast valley at the hour of sunset and were lost. 

I came down the hill munching ripe apples which I found 
lying on the grass under the apple-trees, close by the vine- 
yards of ripe purple grapes. 

Then I heard a new music, which made me forget St. 
Malo. This was a girl's voice, which uttered trivial phrases, 
but so sweetly that I remembered home and my sisters and 
things that happened, well, twenty years ago. 

She was married, but I did not find that out for two 
days. She had as companion another lady staying with her. 
The third day of my holiday I was alone in the hotel with 
these two and we dined by the river's edge in the darkness 
of the garden, our tables being lit by one solitary electric 
light, hung in the willow-trees. 

The noise of the water-rat who plunged in the tall rushes 
at our side did not offend us. And the wide river moved 
slowly on in the darkness, like a story unfolding itself in a 
dream. 

128 



It was only the fourth day that trouble began. I had ac- 
tually paid for the first two days of my stay, at seven francs 
a day. But the patron of this charming hotel was willing to 
let me stay on the third and fourth day if I left behind me 
as security my easel, my large finished oil-colour of the 
river, and my box of colours. Two more days of paradise 
on earth in a real Garden of Eden were not dear at this 
price. 

But I had some most pressing things still to say to the 
younger of the two ladies and I was thoroughly disgusted 
when the patron said I could not stay for the fifth day — the 
Sunday. 

The gargon also seemed thoroughly and heartily disgust- 
ed. He learnt to his astonishment that I was going away 
without giving him a sou. It was true that I was to return 
at the end of the month, ten days hence, and settle my bill 
and take my picture and other goods away. 

But he evidently had decided that I was destined to an 
early grave and he told me he had no faith in my promises 
to pay him later on. It was the first time, he said, such a 
thing had occurred. He would accept, if I offered it him, 
a nice water-colour painting I had done of the bridge and 
the women washing their clothes in the water under it. 

I declined. 

I said good-bye to the charming Parisienne (not without 
having learnt her name and offered to give her lessons in 
English), and having lost my fifteen-shilling umbrella on 
my way to the station, I caught the 7.35 p.m. train and ar- 
rived in Paris. 

Sic transit gloria mundi. 



129 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



AFRICA IN PARIS. 



It was about Christmas time, and things were not looking 
particularly gay with me, when I learnt that I was "wanted" 
by an African explorer. Mr. Herbert Ward, the gentleman 
in question, was years ago one of the officers of Stanley's 
rear-guard in the Emin Pacha Relief Expedition. He had 
shared with Captain Bartlett, Mr. Rose Troupe, Mr. Jame- 
son, and other Central African pioneers the terrible priva- 
tions of life in the savage village of Yambuya. 

Mr. Herbert Ward, who was about to dictate his book 
"A Voice from the Congo" to me, is at once an explorer, 
sculptor, and author."^ He now makes France his home. 
One of his finest bronzes, the colossal statue entitled "Le 
Chef de Tribu," was exhibited last spring in the Paris 
Salon, and is about to take its place in the Luxembourg 
Galleries among the works of art belonging to the French 
nation. 

I was quickly fascinated by the romance of his experi- 
ences in the Congo. The story of the discovery of these 
cannibalistic races was profundly interesting. I learnt this 
story from the lips of a man who had lived five years with 
the Congo cannibals and who knew no less than three of 
their native languages — a rare acquisition, and one which 
distinguishes Mr. Ward from many who, like himself, have 
travelled the world over since their youth. 

I shall try to convey an impression of how, working day 
by day for several weeks in his studio filled with actual 
specimens of the handwork of the savages — their drums, 
their spears, bows, arrows, ivory horns, and wooden idols 
— ^there crept upon me the very spirit of those far-off 
scenes. 

First I was interested. And later on I began to regard 
with astonishment my ignorance on the whole subject. 

My preconceived idea of the Central African savage, as 
a being who was inhuman in every way, dangerous as a wild 
animal, and as impossible to conciliate as a madman, gave 

* "A Voice from the Congo," by Herbert Ward. Published by 
Heineman, London; Hachette, Paris; Scribner, New York. 

130 .J 



place to another impression. As I heard these actual stories 
and anecdotes of kindness shown to the white man by can- 
nibals who saw a European for the first time, a new light 
seemed to shine in the darkness of these far-away forests, 
and I realised that, to quote Mr. Ward's own words: "Hu- 
man nature is more or less the same the whole world over." 
Long before these words appear this revelation will have 
been shared by thousands of others who will have read the 
book which was dictated to me by Mr. Herbert Ward. 
They will conclude that this traveller explored further into 
the character of the Central African savages than ever 
Stanley did. For Stanley never rested long enough in one 
place to learn much of the tribal language. Talking and 
fraternising with cannibals in their huts, Mr. Herbert Ward 
often carried in his hand no adequate defence, but in his 
heart the great talisman of sympathy and humour. 



I was struck by Mr. Ward's exceptional character as a 
writer. All my previous estimates, all my stereotyped con- 
ceptions of literary character were contradicted. 

He has no stupid introspective hesitation. He is not hy- 
percritical in style. 

His valuable experience as lecturer on Central African 
topics has gven him a keen insight into the real value of 
words. 

Thanks to a sound and hardened physical constitution, 
he has preserved, notwithstanding much literary work, a 
healthy and sturdy independence of judgment which enables 
him to decide rapidly on questions of style and to ignore 
the criticism of irresponsible reviewers. 

An active man, an excellent shot, an organiser, and an 
old African campaigner, he brings to bear upon his literary 
work a fund of concentrated and self-contained energy be- 
fore which a mass of confusing details becomes trans- 
formed into an ordered system of arranged facts, properly 
pruned of all extravagant description. 

He appears to know nothing of the agony of over self- 
consciousness and self-criticism which prevents some 
writers from exercising a proper freedom, even when alone 
with their pen in their own studies. 

He is inspired by countless souvenirs of former triumphs 
in the African jungle. These souvenirs now hang upon his 
walls in the form of native Central African spears, bows, 
grass-cloth skirts, axes, and ivory trumpets, or stand 
grouped around the vast atelier in the shape of huge 
bronzes of African chiefs, fugitive slaves, and other mas- 

131 



terly studies sculptured by his own hand, according to docu- 
ments, drawings and data brought by him from the Congo 
district. Together with these are skeletons of gorillas, 
stuffed skins of lurking pythons, majestic heads and trunks 
of elephants. He thus writes in a real African atmosphere, 
where everything smells of those wild and savage scenes 
which, previous to his time, had been untrodden by the foot 
of a white man. 

In this vast studio are exhibited in all three thousand ar- 
ticles. Besides Central African weapons of warfare are to 
be found necklaces of human teeth; musical instruments 
made by cannibals, and giving forth a soft, rich melody of 
their own, full of mystery ; enormous bronze statues, lit with 
a pale uncivilised Hght. 

As Mr Ward says: ''Sometimes when I beat the native 
log-wood drum, my studio seems to become peopled with 
those savages whom I grew to understand." 



Each word of his leads one further into the wilderness 
which he is describing. I often expected to find his phrases 
moulded according to the routine phrases of those who de- 
scribe adventurous doings in the columns, say, of the "Boys' 
Own Paper." But the turn of his phrase is always unex- 
pected. At the moment when I thought I could fill the blank 
with one of my stereotyped dictionary words a new door in 
the chapter was opened quietly by him, and I found that he 
was only searching for the real words which would express 
a certain phrase of his actual experience and existence in 
this savage land of Africa. 

A new light pours into the forest, and just as the scene- 
shifter in a theatre transfigures before our eyes the old 
familiar decor, so I see, instead of the cut-and-dried vo- 
cabulary of the romancers, the real path that leads a step 
further into the jungle, and hear the real sounds that he 
heard, and stand before the secret of the heart of Africa re- 
vealed. 

The temptation, especially to those of some imagination, 
is to think that they can learn in a few hours or a few days 
what another man has learnt through years of dangerous 
experience in the actual scenes which he is describing. No 
greater error could be imagined. 

The more we follow him the further he goes away from 
us, and he can, in a moment, if he wishes, retire so utterly 
into the impenetrable forest of his own real reminiscences 
that we stand there where he left us lost in the mazes of 
imagination, and without a clue as to his whereabouts. 

132 



■ iiiiwmii ■ ■■ 



Here is where fact is so much stranger than fiction. For 
fact has always another surprise left in its locker, whereas 
fiction must be limited to the extent of the reader's credul- 
ity, and cannot profitably be stretched beyond that limit. 

In the midst of dictating his book, Mr. Ward one day 
threw down his pen and rushed off to hunt the wild boar 
in the forests of the Ardennes. 

On his return he brought with him the head of a boar 
which had been a terror to man and beast for years, and 
which he had set at close range while it was charging full 
upon him. He then resumed the book from the point where 
he had left off, and completed it. 

One evening I was having supper with Mr. Ward in the 
studio. Everything was delicious, including the wine, and 
the repast was approaching completion when my host asked 
me if I would have some cheese. An excellent-looking 
Camembert was placed before me, which had only once 
been cut. It had a creamy look about it which spoke vol- 
umes. Before helping myself I asked Mr. Ward if he 
would have some. "Thanks," he replied, 'T never eat 
cheese." 

Strange! I reflected; yet this is perhaps only another 
characteristic trait in the make-up of an African campaign- 
er, who, accustomed to lunch oft' locusts and wild honey in 
the wilderness, abhors cheese. Well, here goes. It is hard 
to cut, however, I said to myself, as I bent the weight of 
my knife on it. Nothing daunted I pressed harder. But 
the game was up. It was made of composition. 

Thursday, January 12, 1910. 

These days see us drawing to the close of this work. 

To-night, as he read aloud to me his last chapter, it 
seemed to me that words sprang so vividly into life in that 
congenial atmosphere of African trophies, that the very 
bronzes of the savages, posed in all livingness about the 
studio, took listening attitudes, and smiled at the enthusiasm 
of the white man, who hoped by his mystic writings to rid 
them of their cruel burdens. 

Like children, they listened with awakened interest to the 
inflections of the voice that spoke in the tongue that was 
strange to them. But having ears they heard not, for it was 
a tongue they never learned to comprehend. 



133 



Mr. Ward once said to me with a tinge of sadness in his 
voice : 

"Some day, I suppose, people will wake up to the knowl- 
edge that there's something in it all, and that the history of 
this black race has not been told in vain. They will try 
and enlarge upon the facts we have given them, but they 
will only have these facts to go upon. And how much they 
will never know." 



We may surely suppose that here, in these primeval for- 
ests, we stand close to the secret of the genesis of human 
existence. 

During the first fiery chaos of the earth's infancy, before 
any final pattern had been evolved, the germ of human life 
lay somewhere buried : 

But when its time was come it sprang 
From out its hidden cell and spread 
A hand to heaven and reared a head, 
And the dark woods with voices rang. 

Perhaps these voices of the savages bring us nearer to the 
mystery of Creation. 



One day the bell rang, and in stepped a personal friend 
of Mr. Ward. 

Who could ever forget the arrival of the Captain? — 
Naval Attache at the British Embassy, if you please! 

''Stand there! while I read to-you my tribute to the mis- 
sionaries," said Mr. Ward. 

As these words sprang from his mouth, I felt that the 
decks were cleared for action. 

All aloft and below was taut and trim. A keen so'-wek- 
erly wind was singing through the spars. The good ship 
was almost under way; and there stood the Captain, with 
eye over everything. 

It was the finishing touch to the great book. And as the 
Captain entered you felt, coming up from the distant hori- 
zon of the seas, the keen, vivifying rush of the salt-laden 
breezes. 

Work was done. The Captain had come aboard. The 
good ship ''Congo Tales" began to move on the slips. 

A bottle of champagne was broken over her. See ! She 
is launched on the great highway of publicity. 

"Stand there, Captain, while I read it to you!" 



134 



January 20, 1910. 

To-day I sat for the last time among the vast bronzes, in 
a dim, artificial twilight, dreaming. 

At last I had to tear myself away. The curtain fell upon 
this dramatic piece of work; the book, "A Voice from the 
Congo," was finished, its seventy thousand words were com- 
pleted. There lay the slain — in the shape of hundreds of 
shorthand notes and waste pieces of paper. 

The giants in bronze were unmoved. Each savage stared 
stolidly and frowningly in front of him. 

On the walls, the thousand-and-one articles, touched with 
golden reflections, completed the picture. 

As I went out I seemed to hear a sudden burst of savage 
music — the log-wood drum was beaten by invisible hands, 
and there echoed through my vision of the primeval forest 
the far-off blast of ivory horns. 

A CHILD'S AFRICA. 

Far, far away in the forest, 

Where you children never can go 
Is a land of wonder and dreams — 

No work, no winter, no snow. 

Here all day long the hot sun 

Pours down on the wildest of flowers, 

No grandfather's clocks to count 
The minutes or strike the hours. 

No candles to light you to bed, 

No neat cots made of feathers and lace; 

In a smart silver-mounted mirror 
You never can see your face. 

No money is there — not a penny; 

Only cloth and beads can you trade 
For the nice shining silver sixpence 

By the savages can't be made. 

Nothing but Insects buzzing: 

The naughty mosquito sings 
All night by your mosquito curtain 

Hovering on tireless wings. 

And here in the long sharp grasses 

The python rears his grim head — 
Once he was twined around you 

You are crushed and swallowed and dead. 

135 



Here the wild guinea fowl 

Calls in the early hours 
The ponderous elephant 

Tramples with all his powers; 

And a mighty river rolls 

Like a fable at his feet 
There are shadowy reaches still 

Where the long- jawed crocodiles meet. 

With the hippopotami 

Those boisterous pigs of the stream 
Who will sink your log canoe 

Before you've got time to scream. 

And hark the monkeys that chatter 

Far away in the echoing wood 
Scrambling in fear and anger 

After their daily food. 

Here the black man lives in his glory 

With his shield and his spear and his wife — 

His life is an untold story 

Of the dance, the trap and the knife. 

Even the trees are alive 

For the savage knows full well 
That each of his ancestors lives 

In the form of a tree ; he will tell 

How in the stormy nights 

When the leopard howled for fear 
And the trumpeting elephants ran 

In the jungle far and near y 

He heard the trees groaning and sighing 

Like spirits ill at ease — 
Broken and bruised and crying 

Rocked by the rushing breeze. 

Of course since the advent of the rapacious Belgians and 
their systematic torturing of the natives for the purpose of 
terrorising the latter into collecting more rubber the white 
man's word is no longer accepted by an African native and 
the white traveller is liable to be shot on sight. 



136 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



A PARISIAN DENTIST. 



How rare and admirable a thing is the dentist. A being, I 
should say rather. How gravely he looks at you, wonder- 
ing, no doubt, in his own mind whether you are going to 
pay when he has stopped your tooth. It is an unwritten 
law of this artist that he will work for you with all that 
exquisite care, that prompt decision, that finesse of skill 
of which he is capable, without asking you to pay a penny- 
piece in advance. 

He will put in operation that horrible "burr," the very 
sound of which, grating its way gingerly within the hollow 
cavities of an enormous molar, seems to drive back Into 
their uttermost recesses the last fragments of one's shat- 
tered courage. 

Oh, inhuman engine of civilised surgery, thou keen and 
rasping file, which, driven at top speed by a pressure of the 
foot, or perhaps by an electric current, maintains that ago- 
nising speed within one's mouth, picking its way between 
decayed bone and dancing nerve-centres, with a sureness 
and an implacability alike incredible and horrible. 

One's mind meanwhile ranges over the great cosmos, 
surveying Europe through the misty window-panes of the 
dentist's operating chamber. As in death, a thousand half 
or wholly-forgotten considerations rush through the brain. 
The imagination, awakened to its liveliest pitch, produces 
impossible pictures in the mind. One's creditors (burr! 
grate! crash — how near the nerve that was!) stand ranged 
in serried rows before one. (Burr — burr!) On the coun- 
tenances of all is writ clearly that message of remonstrance 
whose only tangible form finds itself displayed in bills ask- 
ing for prompt payment. Impossible pictures indeed ! 

One actually dreams, as that dread steel file grates closer 
to the tooth's root, that one has paid the dentist and is 
goino: merrily on one's way, with those dread, draughty 
cavities securely plumbed with adamantine chemical — a 
composition fit to stand the mastication of ten years — a 
metal that starts not back affrighted at the sound of the 

139 



grinding of the mills — ^that clashing of jaw-bones, which 
signifies good digestion waiting upon appetite. 

"Thank you — till Wednesday next" 

It is the voice of my friend, the dentist. A cold perspira- 
tion has gathered on my brow. I thought for a moment 
that he was going to ask for an instalment in advance. No ; 
he bows me out most politely. If he knew that I had but 
one franc in my pocket! 

Oh, teeth — would that I had more of you to save ! 

One day I went to see my friend, M. Ulbricht, a German, 
who carries on a business in Paris and whom I met for the 
first time in London, when he came to our boarding-house 
in 41, Guilford Street, and stayed there for some time. 
To-night he started from the Gare de I'Est on one of his 
rounds to Bale (Suisse), Baden-Baden, Heidelberg, Frank- 
furt-sur-Main, Vienna, Hamburg, etc. His ticket cost Frs. 
250 and looked like a three-volume novel, so many pages 
in it. I envied him, being free to roam on this excursion, 
which carries him as far as his own home in Germany. Of 
course he has to combine business with pleasure. After 
saying good-bye to him I watched some " rapides " come in 
from Nancy and other longer journeys. There is something 
very attractive to see, late at night, these leviathans come 
rolling majestically into their safe harbourage beneath the 
vast smoke-wreathed vault of the station, leaving behind 
them their huge, star-lit racecourse. Especially interesting 
(though few amongst the hundreds of passengers who owe 
their lives to him give him so much as a glance) is the 
driver, black-moustached, his ruddy face streaked with oil- 
stains. He stands erect upon the platform of his huge loco- 
motive, the size of which dwarfs him, though he is of no 
mean stature. Released at last, after many hours of anxious 
peering through darkness, from his vigil on the train wjiich 
is tearing across Germany and France, he stands a^ease, 
though the set expression of his eyes still bears evidence 
of the strain imposed, and he watches, hurrying along the 
platform below him, the huge crowd of passengers — Ger- 
mans muf^.ed in vast leather-coloured overcoats, with slouch 
hats of the same colour and carrying, slung on their shoul- 
ders, hunting gear — immaculate leather valises in their 
hands. One leads by a chain a dog, who is trying his best 
to understand the meaning of it all, casting inquisitive 
glances upon his master as he hurries along, obedient to 
these calls of high-pressure civilisation. Here, a French- 
man is effusively met and greeted by his waiting friends, 
who seize his luggage for him. Here come soldiers in an 
unknown uniform. The next bunch of travellers may v/ell 

140 



have come from China. It is the end of the journey. Paris, 
scintillating under the starlight, is well equipped, with her 
thousand pleasures and workshops, to receive them all and 
take from each her toll of joy or sorrow. 

Yesterday being Sunday, I went in the afternoon climbing 
to Montmartre. The view was glorious at the very top, 
and at five p.m., being an autumn night, the sun coming 
streaming very gloriously across from the wxst, struck 
through the coloured windows of the Eglise du Sacre Coeur, 
making rainbow patterns on the high, smooth walls. Away 
and far below these heights lies Paris, mist-wreathed and 
touched with sunlight, like ripened fruit. Towers and pin- 
nacles soar out of the indistinct shapes of streets and gar- 
dens, but all below a certain height is merged in indistinct 
forms and shadows, like a submarine city. 



LANGUAGES. 



There may be many that live peaceably enough through 
this world and pass out into the next with never any other 
language save their own to conjure with. 

These do not know that great cosmopolitan congress 
wdiich comprises nations of as many hues, manners, and 
languages as the rainbow has colours. 

They never move in that strange dance through the mazes 
of which thread the guttural-tongued German, the sweet- 
voiced Frenchman, the clarion-toned Spaniard, even the 
chattering Chinee. 

I met to-night a lady, quite young and very beautiful, 
who speaks not only those, but seven other languages. 
Waltzing round the world, she maintains the same graceful 
conversation, whether she speaks Norwegian in Norway, 
Russian in her own country, or the language of France in 
the Capital of that nation. 

When she was aged but thirteen she spoke four languages 
with ease and fluency. 

How different the life of this butterfly, flitting from city 
to city across the great continents of the world, and adapt- 
ing her conversation to that of whatever nation she favours 
with her presence, to the life of, say (to take the other ex- 
treme), an honest agricultural labourer of Hampshire, who 
does not hold with "them furriners," and who passes sixty 
or seventy years in a quiet village, knowing no greater 

141 



exeitement than an occasional visit to the nearest market 
town. 

This is where education steps in, crying, "Open, Sesame !" 
to the locked secrets of nine-tenths of a universe, and 
causing to pass before the eye the variegated life and liter- 
ature of nations inhabiting the uttermost parts of the earth. 

The instance which I have named is, however, a special 
one. For Russian is one of the most difficult of languages 
that an Englishman can learn. A Briton may live ten years 
in Russia and be incapable of speaking the language com- 
fortably. Whereas a Russian, having learnt his own lan- 
guage, finds all others absurdly easy to acquire, and talks 
English three months after he has landed on our shores. 

Since the Tower of Babel was built, what complications, 
what absurd situations have ensued! How many of us, 
snugly ensconced with an English friend in a Continental 
hotel or inn, have unburdened our hearts freely, in the pres- 
ence of those whom we judged ignorant of our language, 
only to discover afterwards, to our horror and stupefaction, 
that one or two who w^ere listening possessed the magic key, 
and are now smiling serenely at our discomfiture. 

E. Bryham Parsons. 
("Evening Standard," March 6, 1906.) 



THE SLEEPLESS CITY. 

The Gay City — which sleeps not. This is a gaiety that 
makes the eyes very red and mournful, like watery discs of 
purple that blink unceasingly at the sunlight. 

Oh, Paris, fie, fie, on you ! ^^ 

I went into a restaurant the other Saturday at three 
o'clock p.m. and ordered some lunch and a bottle of Eng- 
lish whiskey. 

Presently I got busy in the illustrated papers. Desiring 
some gruyere cheese, that smooth stufif with holes in it, I 
called the waiter. He was se tenant debout — holding him- 
self more or less upright in a great archway which led into 
the adjoining room. I presently approached and touched 
him. Pie was fast asleep. Thus the Gay City is in reality 
a City of Sleep. He fetched my cheese, and I tackled him 
gently on the subject. He explained that he generally 
worked till three o'clock in the morning. "Three hours the 
morning — it is too late. For the people of Paris it is not 
good." 



I believed him. This all-night business, so charming to 
Englishmen let out on a holiday from genuinely soporific 
London, where a restaurant found open at three in the 
morning would be visited with a crushing fine — this all- 
night business of the Gay City makes Jacques the waiter, 
or Henri, the rough-and-ready gargon of the Bouillon, a 
dull boy. 

He must get what sleep he can, standing upright in the 
doorway, between the rush of the dejetmer and the turmoil 
of diner. 

However elaborate mav be the table at which I sit, what- 
ever artistic fioral decorations may lend their frail and beau- 
tiful charms to the scene, howsoever sweetly the musicians 
may make music over yonder behind the palms and the 
ferns, I am much discomforted by the knowledge that the 
waiter in attendance has had no sleep (to speak of) and is 
not likely to get any for many years to come. 

Again, when I entered a Bouillon (for I am sometimes 
very economical) last Saturday to get some tea — French 
tea, you know, that funny pale hot water without any milk 
to it — the place seemed utterly deserted. It was 5.30 p.m. 
The voice of the patron made itself heard, in a lugubrious 
jargon. Suddenly, with sofe footsteps and utterly wearied 
eyes, came floating up from nowhere, flapping negligently 
their enormous napkins, half a dozen pitiable waiters, blink- 
ing and winking like owls who suddenly see daylight. No 
doubt they went to bed at four or five that morning for 
three hours' sleep. They seemed relieved to hear that I 
only wanted tea, and moreover that I only wanted one of 
them to serve me. The others disappeared as noiselessly 
as they came. The Parisian waiter does not snore. But I 
knew that not far from me, on the floor, on the stairs lead- 
ing into the kitchen, or huddling themselves for warmth and 
comfort round some stove in the basement, the waiters slept 
that fearful sleep which knows no fixed hours, which is as 
full of shocks as some terrible nightmare, and which may 
be banished any instant by the terrible cry, "Cafe, un, 
s.v.p. !" which, breaking in upon their dreams, will bring 
the whole dozen of them to their feet, staggering, gasping, 
and blinking before a single insignificant customer. 

26, Rue St. Petersbourg, Paris. 



143 



ONE OF THOSE BLACK ONES/^ 

Give me that black one ! 

Can't I have that black one, please? 
I should like to pick her up 

And place her on my knees ; 
She's a dainty buttercup, 

Full of sport, and such a tease. 
Can't I have that black one? 

Give me one of those black ones, please. 

Yes, I know there are plenty 

That dress in glorious red, 
But all the same, for twenty 

Of rainbow-coloured head. 
Give me the girl that dresses 

In black from tip to toe, 
It's awfully chic and dainty, 

I say it, and I ought to know. 

There are those that spend their caresses 

On blouses blue and green 
And others go mad on dresses 

Of yellow with spots that are green ; 
But believe me, all these colours 

Fall flat and stupid and dead 
And the girl that my arm presses 

Dresses black from foot to head. 

So give me one of those black ones ; 

Can't I have one, please, 
With black pleats round her shoulders 

And black pleats round her knees ? 
Yellow and red and orange, 

What do I care for them all ? 
If I can't have one of those black ones 

I won't have one at all. 



* Even flying visitors to Paris have observed that the predomi- 
nance of black is frequently a feature in the dress of the exquisite 
little Parisian ladies. Mademoiselle "Chivvy" was a case in point. 

144 



MADEMOISELLE "CHIVVY." 

(Somehow we could never call her Madame.) 

Oh, strange mixture of blithesomeness and business abil- 
ity, what wonderful specimen of modern civilisation have 
we here? This is a flower fresh from the forcing house, 
with all the bloom of 150 degrees Fahr. gathered upon it. 
Listen ! You shall hear her speaking that perfect, rippling, 
curly French which breaks in honeyed accents from the red 
lips, like the cooing of a hundred doves. And again, strange 
transformation, she speaks English with a strong American 
accent. What a change! When I entered the room she 
was busy with her typewriter. I addressed a remark to her 
and she replied in a beautifully keen American sample of 
speech, just savoured with the proper (feminine) nasal 
twang. 

A moment later there entered a friend of hers who speaks 
French. She launched out into her own language, purring 
at ease over its splendid syllables. 

She explained. It was this way. W'hen still a child of 
twelve she left Paris, the city of her birth, and crossed the 
Atlantic. She lived with her relations some seven years in 
New York, and as a girl had to find her friends among the 
little girls of that city. She soon picked up the language. 
Some children learn languages with a sort of admirable 
facility which is the envy of us grown-ups. Then she re- 
turned, in the full bloom of health and youth, to Paris and 
married at twenty. 

Full of wisdom, yet sprightly as a kitten, with the high 
spirits of a child, she is now able, as the mistress of two of 
the greatest languages on the earth, to make an excellent 
living in any office. 

You shall find gathered about her all sorts and conditions, 
listening with equal rapture to the calm flow of these two 
languages, so essentially different in .their characteristics, 
yet each possessing a certain charm of its own. Which do 
you prefer? Shalt we turn on the tap through which flows 
so smoothly a perfect and accomplished French, bubbling 
like liquid streams over the soft sibilants and crystallised 
here and there with a brilliant accent ; or that hard, trim, 
businesslike language of the American, full of incisive 
idioms, its tremendous energy tempered a little by a becom- 
ing drawl ? 



On my faith, I ha^ve never met any Frenchwoman so in- 
teresting as this young lady of Franco-American persuasion, 
who holds a sort of animated court in the office and sur- 
prises casual strangers with her equal grasp of the two 
widely different tongues.. 

As I think of it, I owe her something. I was a stranger 
in Paris and she welcomed me in my own language. More 
— she had the exquisite patience to listen to my bad French 
and correct it. Surely the "Entente Cordiale" could go no 
further ! 

Ah, mademoiselle ! 

But I forget. She is married. 

April, 9, 1906. 



OUR OFFICE. 

(Sketch of a certain day in the "Daily Mail" Offices, Rue 

du Sentier, E/V.) 

One by one the night staff come sauntering into the sub- 
editors' room and sit down among the files. Chivvy is get- 
ting restless and wants to know if it is seven. 

No, surely not. In the cool well between our windows I 
hear dropphig from on high pleasant sounds. A cheerful 
bird, cagea but tranquil, uplifts its head in warbling song. 
And some one seems to chop meat at an open window. 
There is no roaring of traffic, for all our windows look 
out upon this central well of light, and above is the clear 
blue sky. 

Charles whistles handsomely by the telephone switch- 
board. The night watchman has looked in, though it is 
still early for him. 

Vita sits alone, drawing Parisian costumes in his dingy 
and forsaken back room. 

For a newspaper office there is certainly a degree of tran- 
quility, unusual and welcome. 

One has but to open the window to hear that meat-chop- 
ping going on. 

And the song of the caged bird mingles with all sorts of 
careless laughter and idle cooings of the children, who peep 
from the windows overhead. 

Below stairs, in a ghastly, blue light, a single compositor 
moves about among trays full of type. 

A few yards away from this peaceful retreat the life of 
the great boulevards goes roaring by. 

146 



At midnight it is tout-a-fait autre chose, and perhaps the 
only poetic note is afforded by the file of "Daily JNIails/' 
which I turned just now, and which reminded me, as the 
paper fell crisply to and fro, of the breaking of waves upon 
a sad seashore. 



VERSAILLES. 

DISCOVERY OF THE HAMEAU OF MARIE 
ANTOINETTE.— A WHITSUNTIDE HOLIDAY. 

Tw'o perfect days at Versailles. Travelled up and down 
each day, but spent many happy hours by the leafy "Hameau 
de Marie Antoinette," making a large w^ater-colour. 

The place is thick w-ith gracious historical associations. 
Every stone reeks of royalty — royalty in a sweet retreat, 
shut out from the applause of the world, and abandoned to 
its own delights. 

The fish in the stream provide constant amusement : "Oh ! 
le gros, le gros !" cries the little band of French people 
watching on the rustic bridge, as the fish are fed, and one 
finny monster comes splashing up amongst the youngsters 
to grab the pieces of bad bread thrown them. 

"Oh ! le gros" — as if there was something almost indeli- 
cate in the size of these giants as compared with the very 
small fry who surround them. 

What a marvellous mixture of classic art and nature run 
wild in these vast gardens of Versailles and Trianon! 

Here is an architecture which might have been erected 
by the gods, serving as a set-off and a climbing-place for 
the wild foliage of Nature — white marble and green trees 
are reflected in the mirror-like surface of sleepy lakes, o'er 
which delicate bridges are flung, all twined in creepers of a 
hundred years. 

What a sweet, fresh air, after the heat of Paris ! What 
soft and soothing sounds ! The dove and the wood-pigeon 
dwell lovingly upon their dreamy notes, they hidden in the 
dark green foliage on high. The grasshopper and the 
cricket sing in the long grass, close under your feet. The 
rooks punctuate the buzzing air with grave, decorous voices. 

There passed, at eventide, the rushing spirits of dead 
kings and nigh-forgotten queens. One almost heard the 
gallop of white horses through the woods, and phantom 
buglers blowing cunning strains flashed by amongst the 
thickening shadows. 

Dear Queen Marie Antoinette. Thank you, for these so 

M 



happy hours, and may we hope that you were very happy, 
too, sometimes. 



June, 1907. 

I shall never forget the strange, deep, and beautiful im- 
pression made upon me by the first glimpse obtained of the 
Hameau of Marie Antoinette. Approaching under an ave- 
nue of lofty trees, I saw on my left the Temple of Love, 
its white Corinthian pillars splashed with flakes of bril- 
liant sunshine. 

Between the narrow path along which I walked and the 
delicately designed temple trickled a little stream peopled 
with the ubiquitous goldfish. I passed on under an avenue 
of colossal trees, all struck with shadow and brilliant with 
sunshine, where this last could filter through. Out of this 
somewhat sombre path 1 emerged on a beautiful green lawn. 

There, far from the sometimes wearisome grandeur of the 
great Chateau of Versailles, and removed from the dazzling 
symmetry of the Great and Little Trianons, stood, all framed 
in green foliage, the favourite rustic residence of Queen 
Marie Antoinette. 

A glorious picture, a living page torn from the books of 
history stood before me. 

How calm, how almost sacred seemed this scene ! 

One felt that one was in the presence of the dead Queen — 
her intimate home life stood displayed before me. 

There was something exquisitely pathetic about the atti- 
tude of this building, w^hose beautiful features nature had 
clothed with her green ivies and purple mosses. 

There was something almost human and essentially lady- 
like in this old building^, which seemed to sav : 

"I verily was, long years ago, the beloved home of that 
dear Queen. Come and touch these ivies which cling about 
me, and stand upon the steps of this winding wooden stair- 
case. Here she trod — and here upon the balcony of a soft 
summer's evening she would lean ; and the King would 
come to see her, riding down yonder dark archway of 
foliage. Here he found her in her nest, by the calm waters 
of the lake, and sheltered by the whispering trees." 

So the dumb stones of this most lovely house seemed, 
standing there in the sweet sunshine of June, to speak to us. 

I forgot to say that I was labouring under a misapprehen- 
sion, which, however, only heightened my interest in the 
Hameau of Marie Antoinette. I thought she was one of the 
King's favourites, whom he had hidden away down here in 
this charming retreat, so as to have her all to himself. 

T have since improved my knowledge of this history, but 

148 



without adding anything to the sum of enchanting sensations 
which my deplorable ignorance inspired, except, perhaps, 
that I feel a tearful sorrow for the Queen, because she was 
snatched away from such an innocent happiness to lose her 
life in Paris amid the angry roar of the Revolution and the 
fiery furnace of a people's wrath. 
Dear old Hameau ! 



AT VERSAILLES. 

(Shade of Louis XIV. (a gorgeous ruin) emerges from his 

coffin.) 

June 1 8, 1906. 

King : Speak ! strangely dressed caitiff, thou black-hatted 
and unruffled knave. Here my poor corpse has five minutes 
of royal resurrection ! Tell me, in ten words, how stands 
the world — above all, what of my beloved Versailles ? 

Greatly changed, your IMajesty, I fear me. No, not as to 
chateau or gardens. The stones of the one and the foun- 
tains of the other live all as orderly and beautiful as ever ; 
but, as to the manner of their using — Sire, I would prefer 
to hold my peace. 

King : Yet speak, for I command it. 

Know then. Sire, that the steam tram runs daily to within 
a few yards of the great courtway of the palace, bringing, as 
doth also the four-horsed brake, the hydra-headed crowd 
alway from the station platform to the palace gates. They 
even, Sire, run about the broad domains, wander within the 
castle walls, gibing and jeering; looking at pictures, for- 
sooth : or eat their luncheons under the great trees, listing 
the while to your soft fountain's play. 

King: Is't possible ! Why, trippers ye call them? 

Even so. Sire. 

Kinp- : What ! hath the divine ris'ht of kins^s no virtue ! 
Is there no guard to drive them oft', the sacrilegious vermin ? 
Doth God-ordained royalty slumber on its throne ? 

Fallen, Sire. The people tired of their idol. They found 
his weight too great to bear upon their shoulders and o'er- 
threw him. In a sweltering sea of blood the sun of royalty 
sank down, perchance for ever. They sell official catalogues 
now, Sire, within the castle precincts and pieces of bread 
to feed the fish. They hire chairs out at ten centimes each. 
Yea, a "bateau a I'helice" plies to and fro upon the canal. 

King : Hush ! no more. Let me be begone. Perish 
these thoughts. Yet, stay. Methinks there was a favourite 
spot of mine down by Trianon yonder — (he sighs). 



Be easy, Sire. Not a stone is hurt. All has been kept 
just as you loved to have it. 

Exit the King. 
A few muffled bars of the "Dead March" and 

CURTAIN. 



GUIBOUT'S. 

Paris, February lo, 1909. 

I ought really to write a word about Guibout's liveliest of 
night restaurants in Place Clichy. 

Its real fame arises from the fact that Farrell and I went 
there and dined off "hors d'oeuvres" one night. 

Honour bright, that was all we ate, and we drank but a 
demi-carafe of wine between us. 

Holy smoke, how the waiters grinned! 

The management knew me as an old customer, but Far- 
rell was in a fair trap. Even his stand-off, reserved, nigger- 
driving nature broke down at last and he fairly roared as I 
called for the "addition." 

Of course, there was nothing to ''add" ! 

Add to that, that we had not dined badly at all — who that 
has good appetite can grumble at chopped meat with spiced 
potatoes, followed by excellent sardines in oil, really deli- 
cious salad of celery, a few brief slices of filet de hareng 
soaked in clear oil, a slice or two of German sausage, some 
of those red pickled things, and as much bread and butter 
as you can desire, with yet another palatable dish, to wit, 
hard-boiled eggs chopped into clean, small fragments with a 
little pepper on them. 

Thank you, gargon ! All that is forty centimes in Gui- 
bout's. Excellent house. 

I care not a rap for yonder smiling ladies, who survey us 
from behind their champagne bottles (oh, you can do your- 
self well at Guibout's) with a smile in which amusement is 
mingled with surprise. 

Dear old Guibout's. And what music. 

A panorama of faces passes us outside in Place Clichy. 

Inside we are cosy. 

Well, I promised the dear manager to write him up in 
the "Herald," but since that was impossible for the moment 
the above must suffice. 

As for the waiter who says "Ah ha !" to me when I enter 
and grins like a Cheshire cat — well, I suppose he must be 

150 



n 



excused. He is probably remembering the "hors d'oeuvre" 
dinner we took that night when Farrell and myself were so 
hard up. 

Au revoir, waiter. Cheer up, and look forward to a 
bigger tip next time. 



ON THE MfiTROPOLITAIN. 

Paris, January i6, 1906. 
She made a movement with her pretty head — as though 
she were going to bite his nose off. If she hadn't been a 
perfectly pretty girl, labouring under excess of emotion, 
there would have been an element of absurdity in the move- 
ment. As it was — well, I only saw her swan-white neck 
and perfect profile reach out towards his and he stroked her 
under the delicate chin. 



THE REAL PARIS. 
(Extract from letter to G — g — y.) 

January 15, 1906. 

"In the thickly wooded Bois de Boulogne, the great park 
of Paris, one may be met any night by ladies clothed only 
in fur-lined cloaks ; who, rushing upon a man, open their 
cloaks, displaying all their dazzling charms, so that a poor 
man is sore put to it to escape. 

"Again, there are those ladies who walk upon a glass roof, 
below which men with eye-glasses and upturned heads strut 
knowingly." 



A NEW PIED PIPER. 

Charming Scene in the Luxembourg Gardens. 

November 4, 1906. 
The Pied Piper of Hamelin passed away long ago, leading 
after him, entranced and bewitched, some of the prettiest 
children of his generation. But another Pied Piper has come 
to light. We were strolling through the Luxembourg Gar- 
dens last Sunday, just before dusk. The trees, gorgeous in 
their autumn-coloured costumes, sheltered crowds of happy 
Parisians, who love the Luxembourg for a Sunday afternoon 
holiday. There were gallant toy steamboats and sailing ves- 



sels moving briskly over the waters of a little lake, their all 
too brief voyages watched eagerly from the shore by crowds 
of young and old. A band played charming airs mider the 
trees. But the great event of the evening was yet to come. 

At about a quarter to five we noticed a gendarme who 
seemed to be placing on his station a neat soldier, who stood 
at attention with a drum and two drumsticks balanced be- 
fore him. The gendarme waved the crowd away and the 
soldier commenced to march forward, beating a brisk tattoo 
on the drum. Instantly the child who was pushing a me- 
chanical toy monkey ceased to be interested in the latter's 
quaint gesticulations ; a girl of four, who towed a large 
coloured balloon behind her, left her nurse and ran ; and a 
score of other children, rich and poor, hearing the rapid 
music of the soldier's drum, flew after him. Around the 
gardens he went and all the children flocked to follow him. 
He beat a tune which told the closing of the gardens. The 
hour had come for everyone to leave their several pleasures ; 
but that was the last and greatest pleasure of them all. The 
soldier looked neither to the right nor to the left. He 
marched straight forward, with the children all running to 
keep pace with him. They made a gallant army, that came 
laughing and rustling through the gardens, the fallen leaves 
of autumn running before them, and the brave, martial mu- 
sic of the rolling drum brought at every step fresh young 
adherents to the soldier's flag. The sun was setting by the 
time the soldier and the children reached the gates. When 
the drum stopped they clapped their hands to show how 
they had enjoyed the march. 

The signal for the closing of the Luxembourg Gardens 
was certainly more effective than the shouts of "All out !" 
which one hears in a London park. 



OLD SIGHTS THROUGH NEW EYES. 

THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON. 

This morning I visited the Tomb of Napoleon. Oh ! 
France, France, how you have failed here, at this great op- 
portunity, to do yourself justice. 

No magnificent heroic-sized bronze of Napoleon himself, 
falling on one knee before the weight of accumulated calam- 
ity, his outstretched hands seeming still to ward off utter 
defeat, while a band of white angels leaning above him offer 
him, with linked hands, the laurels that belong to the brave. 

152 



This huge bronze urn, appalHng, desolating in its sim- 
pHcity — utterly barren of ornament, on which not the hum- 
blest flower lies — no, nor even the simplest inscription ! And 
then ! the painted floor. The yellow stars that make a cheap 
design around the ugly urn. Again, the trite, expressionless 
stone figures who surround the urn. Not one of them has 
a word of history to say. On the countenance of all is writ 
the same monotony of line. Better to have had the figures 
of Napoleon's old and trusted Guard bending the knee 
around him with some reverence than this quintette of ex- 
pressionless stone — this seraglio of stern-visaged, unemo- 
tional angels, who are neither Amazon nor Venus. 

To this tomb come, with bare heads, representatives of all 
the nations of the world. They lean over the stone balus- 
trade and look down into that cold, cheerless well and, if 
they have any admiration for the greatest of Emperors, if 
they are capable of hero-worship, they sigh with grief and 
disappointment. 

Elevated on some steps beyond, and quite detached from 
the tomb, stands a very noble and heavily-gilt piece of archi- 
tecture — the richly ornamented architrave being supported 
on five curly pillars, which shelter beneath them an altar. 
The whole structure is bathed in the most extraordinary 
efifect of sunshine, as though it were tinged with the rays of 
a rising or a setting sun. This eflfect is arrived at by the 
juxtaposition of two vast and lofty windows of yellow- 
stained glass, the light falling through which into the in- 
terior of the dome burnishes with astonishing eclat various 
points and promontories here and there of the gilt archi- 
tecture of this handsome structure. 

Entirely detached as it is from the actual tomb of Na- 
poleon, and bearing on it no single inscription which can 
possibly connect it with the dust of the great Emperor, one 
is left in doubt as to its actual meaning. Perhaps sufficient 
excuse for this gorgeous marvel of reflected light is to be 
found in the very weird effect which it produces when seen 
from the interior of the Chancel of the Invalides. A great 
window above the altar of this church permits one to catch 
a glimpse of the dome of Napoleon's tomb, and through this 
window floods of dark purple colour vie with splashes of 
brilliant and awe-inspiring gold, so that one might imagine 
that the Angel of Death himself stood near by, with folded 
wings, a light that never was on sea or land testifying to his 
presence. 



153 



THE MOULIN R0U<;E. 

December 2, 1906. 
The Moulin Rouge is a sort of deception and snare. We 
can, however, very well forgive it its uninteresting interior 
for its picturesque exterior. The fact is many people come 
to a halt when they see the Moulin Rouge for the first time, 
with its round turret standing up in the night, and its black 
arms, all lit with yellow lamps, revolving as though pressed 
by a western breeze. The general impression is that if you 
go inside you will see more windmill — a huge barn-like 
room, with pretty girls dressed as miller's daughters dancing 
on the floor of a clean-swept granary. One would even look 
to meet the miller — an old fashioned French miller, with 
spectacles and a white cap and his clothes hanging loosely 
in folds about him, all covered with white dust. He has a 
charming smile, and marshals the girls before him as they 
sweep over the granary floor, their trim ankles a thing of 
beauty and a joy for ever, and their twinkling feet keeping 
time to merry music. 



NO MILL GIRLS. 

There is nothing of this sort inside the Moulin Rouge. 
In fact, there is no mill inside, though there is a beautiful 
mill outside. The inhabitants of Montmartre are proud qi 
their mill, lit up at night time, and admired so much by 
strangers, from all parts of the world. But inside one finds 
only an ordinary music-hall, with tables and chairs, and if 
you sit down you are forced to order drinks, and a waiter, 
dressed in the conventional fashion, attends you. There are 
no mills girls and there is no old miller. Admire, therefore, 
the Moulin Rouge from without, and do not destroy your 
fond illusions. We had imagined that by paying an extra 
franc one could go up in the tower of the mill, escorted 
thither by a nice mill maiden with trim ankles. We thought 
one climbed up a rickety staircase, past cobwebs and little 
slits of windows in the wall. All this is untrue. There is 
no mill inside the Moulin Rouge. 



NO CORN. 

There is no com in this mill. And whoever heard of a 
mill without corn in it^corn heaped up in huge mountains 

154 



in the solemn, shadowy corners of the granary, and which 
falls down with a soft silvery sound when you shovel it 
away with the wooden scoop ? 

We shake the dust of this false mill off our feet and come 
out, for it is a whited sepulchre. 

(Printed in the "American Register," 
Paris, December 2, 1906.) 



CHEZ MAXIM'S. 

December 2, 1906. 

They say that distance lends enchantment to the view, but 
there are few travellers who are sufficiently philosophical to 
content themselves with a distant view of the Alps when 
they may climb to the summit of Mont Blanc — or with an 
imaginary vision of Maxim's when they can push open the 
door and, by ordering a whisky and soda, see the gay in- 
terior of one of the gayest of the restaurants of Paris. 

Here are faces which one sees nowhere else. The faces 
of the wxU-bred aristocrats and the figures of the best- 
dressed men in Paris. Here is a youth already bald-headed, 
but who, if he has lost his hair, has not lost his charming 
smile, before which waiters bow down while they hasten to 
relieve him of his fur-lined overcoat. He is an habitue of 
the house and casts his money freely upon the waters, care- 
less whether or not it returns to him after many days. All 
that concerns him is the knowledge that here he may pass 
some of the most perfect hours of his idle existence amid 
the most cheerful surroundings. Here is constant and sooth- 
ing music, soft pictures of lovely nymphs decorate the walls ; 
all that money can buy in the way of costly refreshment will 
be borne towards him on silver trays and there are an abun- 
dance of delicious female forms moving constantly across 
his smoke-blurred horizon — celebrated beauties, none of 
whom are, as the French term it, "of a savage virtue," and 
with whom one can discuss in perfect freedom the absorbing 
topic of the hour (1.30 a.m.). 

Chez Maxim's ! Here the waters of Lethe flow full and 
fast. All these buzzing voices indicate, in their soft and 
unperturbed tones, that their owners have lost sight of the 
troubles of existence. The great world of ordinary mortals 
goes on fighting and struggling outside the glass doors. 
Within all is blithe and gay — an earthly paradise, peopled by 
earthly angels. Long live Maxim's, the home of lauhter, 
wine, and love ! 

(Above was printed in the ''American Register.") 

155 



THE TREATMENT OF HORSES IN PARIS. 

In those remarkable opening stanzas of "Maud," the poet 
Tennyson, sitting in reflective mood, before the storm of th€ 
approaching tragedy gathers on his horizon, seems to survey 
with his mind's eye the whole vast field of life, marshalling 
before us in sad array all human crimes and injustice. He 
passes from the cunning greed of the miser to the violent 
outrage of the slums, where : 

"The vitriol madness flushes up in the ruflian's head. 
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled 
wife." 

But, if wife-beating is less common in Paris than in some 
other cities of the world, there is at least another horror of 
the night in the French capital, and this consists of the noise 
created in the small hours by an exasperated cocher, who is 
visiting the sins of an economical client upon his unfortu- 
nate dumb animal, while the latter wonders why on earth he 
is suddenly tormented in this fashion for no apparent reason 
and at an hour when the deserted streets can bring him no 
relief from sympathetic passers-by. 

But there are also as many instances of daylight cruelty 
and it is to wage war against all this that Mrs. Anna Con- 
over has raised the standard of Protection for Animals in 
Paris. 

Mrs. Conover was born at Copenhagen and, having re- 
ceived her education first at Hanover, then at Stroud in 
Gloucestershire, and subsequently in Paris, she started on 
her work well equipped with three languages, to engage 
single-handed in the herculean task of reforming the cochers 
of Paris, who, of course, are directly responsible for the 
cruelties practised on their animals, though these cochers 
are themselves so badlv treated by the managing companies 
that it is small wonder that they wreak their vengeance 
sometimes, for a hard and thankless life of toil, on the un- 
fortunate animals in their charge. 

Indeed, it has been Mrs. Conover's first care, since she 
entered upon her campaign against cruelty seven years ago, 
to inquire, in all cases of cruelty to cabhorses, first into the 
well-being of the cocher and, by giving him medicine if he 
is ill or entertaining his children with Christmas dinners and 
the like amusements, to reach by kindness the heart of the 
cocher, in the certain hope that such kindness will be under- 
stood and appreciated better than mere angry reprimands, 
and will in course of time be reflected in his own actions 
towards his horse. 

iq6 



On these lines she has made somewhat of a departure 
from the ordinary rules laid down by the Society for Pro- 
tection to Animals in Paris, which seldom takes the trouble 
to inquire into the lot of the cocher before insisting that he 
shall treat his horse humanely. I must say, en passant, that 
my own experience w'ith this society has not been a happy 
one. I was one day passing dow^n the Rue du Faubourg- 
Saint Honore, close to the British Embassy, when, as 1 
approached No. — of that street, I heard a noise emanating 
from a poultry shop which resembled that sound which ma- 
sons make when they are scraping a w^all. As I passed 
before the shop I noticed that fowds were being plucked 
alive, hence the excruciating shrieks which proceeded with 
monotonous reiteration from the interior of the establish- 
ment. I thought this would be a good case where a couple 
of officers of the Societe Protectrice des Animaux could 
swoop down there and then upon the offender, who was a 
young man, surrounded by other shop assistants. I imme- 
diately telephoned to the offices of the society, but was told 
that it was their lunch hour, and that therefore they could 
not be expected to come round. They said they would send 
someone in the course of the afternoon. I replied angrily 
that that would be far too late as the whole basket of fowls 
would by that time have been plucked. To my certain 
knov/ledge they never sent round at all. I presently entered 
the shop, but the barbarity was already at an end, and the 
shopman of course assured me that I had been mistaken in 
my surmise and that the fowls w^ere dead. I am not an 
officer of the society, and had neither time nor authority to 
proceed further in the matter, but I mention this case as 
fully bearing out Mrs. Conover's statement that the staff of 
the society, who are paid to prevent this sort of thing, are 
generally to be found smoking cigarettes with their legs 
on the office mantelpiece, or lounging around doing nothing, 
if, indeed, they are to be found on the premises at all. I 
know one or two "Herald" men out of a job who are try- 
ing to get a berth in this easy-going office. 

A letter wdiich I subsequently addressed to the "New York 
Herald" on the matter was not printed, and Captain Hutt, 
of that paper, told me that they had been uncertain whether 
to use the letter or not, as complications with the poultry 
shop might have ensued. 

Mrs. Conover lost a champion of her cause when the late 
John Hollingshead, the renowned manager of the Gaiety 
Theatre in London, died. He was a man of enormous ac- 
tivity and wide experience. He inquired carefully into her 
methods of working, and subsequently made a public state- 

157 



ment that she was doing more practical work, without re- 
ceiving any outside help, than most of the existing societies 
put together. He therefore lent his pen to tell the world of 
animal lovers how hard Mrs. ConOver had worked, spending 
her own money in the cause of the poor, overworked horses 
of Paris, starting a Band of Mercy for Parisian children, 
paying all the necessary expenses out of her own pocket, and 
foundmg, above all, the "Union Fraternelle de Cochers de 
Paris," which now numbers thousands of cochers among its 
members. Their motive for joining this union may some- 
times be a selfish one, but that is not for us to decide. 

Mrs. Conover is a well-known personality to all lovers of 
animals in Paris. She works on her own lines, and is not 
herself a society, but she is always glad to answer all ques- 
tions as to her work, her projects, and her experience, and 
visitors to her rooms in i6. Rue Louis-David out at Passy, 
will find her reprimanding passing cochers or handing them 
liniments for their horses through the bars of the window 
on the ground floor. It has even been rumoured that thirsty 
cabmen draw up here now and again for a glass of beer. 
A coachman known for cruelty, however, will not have a 
ghost of a chance in this direction, and will be as relentlessly 
driven away as the donkeys which Betsy Trotwood warned 
off her Green. 



THE SAME DOG. 
(A Paris Idyll.) 

A long, brown dog — a sort of a hound — met me, hurrying 
in the opposite direction. 

He looked, also, as if he had been sent down by the British 
Chamber of Commerce to look after a job of Fr. 30 weekly 
instead of the 50 or 75 he was earning. 

The same worried, breathless look, the same rapid foot- 
steps. 

"Ships that pass in the night," I thought to myself, as we 
both simultaneously dodged a baker's cart that came clatter- 
ing over the cross-roads, and the dog's eye met mine in one 
brief comprehensive glance. 

So human did he seem to me as we passed without any 
other greeting than a look, that the thought came immedi- 
ately to my mind : "What more am I than this dog, and 
how can I tell what he knows that I do not know, and how 
much he thinks that I think also ?" 

158 



LETTER ADDRESSED BY THE AUTHOR 

TO 
THE ''EVENING STANDARD." 

May 9, 1906. 
Dear Sir : 

For the last twelve months I have lived in Paris, and as a 
friend of animals (as I hope most good Englishmen are) 
was of course just as horrified and disgusted as crowds of 
others, to see how the horses are treated in this otherwise 
charming city. Those who have ever seen horses at their 
best, stepping proudly out of the stables on a glorious au- 
tumn morning on their way to the hunting field, every sense 
alert, and listening with eagerness to the music of the horn 
and the hounds ; those who have ever owned and cared for a 
horse of their own, making him a friend and a companion 
in long cross-country rambles, must see with horror in our 
great cities the miserable specimen of a once noble type, 
the helpless slave who, tied and bound to a heavy tram or 
taximetre, absolutely incapable of retaliation, trots over the 
hard-paved roads all day and sometimes all night at the 
mercy of a drunken driver. The cocher of Paris visits upon 
his unfortunate beast all the sins of those fares who do not 
pay him in a sufficiently generous fashion. In fact, if the 
cocher has anything to grumble at he takes it out by whip- 
ping his horse. The cocher, being often in a state of semi- 
intoxication, lets his horse know how jovial he feels by 
giving him an extra dose of lashes. Late the other night I 
came across a cocher outside a small cafe. He was stroking 
his horse's head. Blood was flowing from the animal's 
mouth. The cocher while on his box had been vindictively 
tugging at the bit for want of better employment. He was 
now varying the exercise by commiserating in his drunken 
fashion with the horse's misfortune. 

Now people do not come all the way over from America 
and England to see such scenes as this. They often spend 
their hardly-earned savings by coming away for a holiday, 
and if they are in the least sensitive to the sufferings of 
dumb beasts, Paris, as a show, is very often entirely spoilt 
by the wanton cruelty yhich it exhibits. Why should the 
more refined among travellers, and those who spend their 
money (often lavishly, if they happen to be rich) in passing 
through Paris, have their holiday spoilt in this way? If 
Paris chooses to set up, as she does, as a playground for 
people of all the different nations of the world, let her carry 
the thing through properly, and not mar the spectacle by 

I5Q 



something which can be stopped instantly, if she desires to 
stop it. 

There is only one way to stop cochers from ill-treating and 
under-feeding their horses, and that is to stop them. It is no 
good, to my mind, giving them printed tracts which appeal 
to their sense of humanity (a sense which many of them 
unfortunately do not possess) or imploring them to consider 
their poor dumb horses. We are dealing here with a class 
of men who like to see educated people implore them to do 
something which they have no intention of doing. Why pet 
a semi-intoxicated cocher ? Why talk persuasively to a crim- 
inal? Suppose that we adopt this method with the other 
crimes, besides cruelty. Suppose that we implore pickpock- 
ets, who murder and rob us, to give up their bad ways for 
the Lord's sake, should we get our watches back? It is 
because the lazu is not behind them that agitators for hu- 
manity to animals over here are the laughing-stock of their 
enemies. Here we have to do with a huge cab-owning insti- 
tution, which is part and parcel of the City's life, owning 
in the aggregate thousands and thousands of taximetres 
and other carriages, and we talk of giving tracts to coach- 
men in order that they shall spare the backs of their skinny 
horses. The fact is that unless the law can be made to stir 
itself in the matter, we are powerless to check this systematic 
and day by day cruelty. These horses who can scarcely 
stand will still be forced to trot. These poor animals who 
are obliged to take their sleep standing will still be whipped 
up if they fall on the ground, and all these and other un- 
heard-of cruelties will continue until a committee of inspec- 
tion is organised in Paris by the law, a committee compris- 
ing veterinary surgeons who will be empowered to examine 
into the conditions under which horses are worked and to 
visit repeated offenses of the cochers with imprisonment. 

Cochers are not children. They have arrived at an age 
when it is no longer possible (even if it were desirable) to 
teach them good manners with soft words and humanity 
with kind promises. A recent tract published in Paris re- 
garding cruelty to horses mentioned that since cochers 
always take off their hats when a funeral cortege goes by, 
they could be taught a similar respect for the feelings of 
dumb animals. But cochers were taught when they were 
children to take their hats off to hearses and they were not 
taught to care for dumb animals. Here is where the law 
should step in and Parisians would do well to frame that 
law and agitate for it, for upon the influx of visitors a great 
part of the prosperity of Paris is beginning to depend. 

Could horses speak, all they said would instantly be lis- 

i6o 



tened to with rapt attention. They would immediately form 
themselves into trade unions and get a great deal of the 
traffic management into their own "hands." They would 
tell a sorry story as to long hours, the lash, insufficient food, 
leaky and ill-ventilated stables ; and a deputation of lame 
and skinny horses would at once be received by the Presi- 
dent of the Republic, who would hear patiently all they had 
to say. The horses would elect from among themselves 
Labour Members to represent them in the Nations' Parlia- 
ments. But since horses cannot speak, the least we can do 
is to speak for them. 

We all remember how strange we felt when first visiting a 
foreign people, not one word of whose language we under- 
stood. If we were in any difficulty or trouble what an im- 
mense annoyance it was not to be able to express ourselves. 
Yet this is the permanent condition of our four-footed 
friends and through no fault of their own. — Yours, etc. 

Our attention was attracted a few days ago to a short 
letter on what many people are fond of calling "an old 
topic," but which is none the less painful reading. The 
writer of the letter described the agonising struggles before 
a jeering crowd of a horse which had had its legs broken by 
an accidental explosion in the streets, and which had been 
for four hours plunging about in pools of blood waiting for 
somebody to come and put it out of its misery. An agent of 
police told the writer who had witnessed this scene that one 
was not permitted to kill it, and a pharmacien near by re- 
fused to telephone to the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals. Is it really necessary that the inhab- 
itants of a civilised city should be obliged to witness from 
their windows a spectacle of such callous and cruel barbar- 
ity? We presume the pharmacien in question thought him- 
self entitled to watch this scene till its bitter end, and there- 
fore resented any interference on the part of the person who 
requested him to telephone for somebody to put an end to 
the sport. 

Surely English and American visitors to Paris, who spend 
a great deal of their money in that city, should have some 
voice in the matter. Has M. Lepine no power in cases of 
this sort? Soft and ladylike pleading is lost upon those who 
promote and enjoy such spectacles as these, and the iron 
hand of the law can alone teach them the lesson of human- 
ity. Four hours after the explosion we are told that "the 
poor animal is trying to stand up — and a jeering crowd is 
staring at it." 



t6t 



AT THE PARIS ZOO. 

MISSING LINK REFLECTIONS. 

We differ from the other animals by reason of our im- 
mense disregard for natural disadvantages, our sublime 
indifference to our smallness of stature, and a studied igno- 
rance of our appalling resemblance to the apish tribes, espe- 
cially the large gorilla. 

In any creatures of less mental and moral force than 
ourselves this unheard-of and frightful resemblance to the 
monkey would have daunted all effort, and led us back, 
crushed and brow-beaten, into the savage life of the forests. 

Some of our cleverest men, especially those who, ilke 
Darwin and the French scientist whose life-like statue occu- 
pies a prominent position in the Jardin des Plantes, bear in 
their features all the traits of enlightened monkeydom. 
The lines of the brow take on a sort of spiritual emphasis, 
it is true, but the direction of those lines if often purely and 
simply those of the monkey, and the piercing eyes of the 
man of genius, though evidencing merely, we know, a hun- 
ger for knowledge, have an effect exactly similar to those 
of the monkey who hungers for nuts. 

In the face of such a deplorable and humiliating likeness 
we have nevertheless made ourselves masters of the globe, 
and, with a sort of restless enthusiasm of energy, we have 
sent out over the surface of all oceans the great ships whose 
iron-clad prows furrow the still or raging waters of the 
solitary deep. We have spanned hideous chasms of Na- 
ture's awful making with our bridges, across which rock 
trains which run from one continent to another. 

There is very little of the mqnkey about this. But our 
physical resemblance to the monkey remains. The monkey 
himself, long-haired, ravenous, chattering, is still swinging 
from branch to branch of the primaeval forest, chattering 
angrily at the approach of our trans-continental trains, 
cracking the huge nuts to get at the kernels ; sometimes 
falling dead, pierced to the heart by the bullets of our in- 
vincible guns. 

We did wisely to get away as far as possible from the 
monkey, in conversation, in dress, in convention. Our visit- 
ing cards, the very pipes we smoke, the collars and frock- 
coats we wear, our cricketing flannels, even our motoring 
costumes (quaint though these latter are) have placed a 
huge and impassable gulf between us and the monkey. 

Small in ourselves, our weapons are tremendous. Lan- 
guage, and the art o"f writing down speech and building 

162 



from it argument, philosophies and mathematics, these have 
placed us and our hairy ancestors (if such they be) miles 
apart. 

1 he primitive instincts remain. But they have small 
room for growth, crushed under the complex machinery of 
civilisation. Jealousy, passion, murder, the habit of steal- 
ing, secrecy, inordinate love of food, all these taints we may 
thank the monkey for. Against them we have set up : 

(i) The criminal law (a most complicated and therefore 
terrifying piece of machinery). 

(2) Religion, appealing to the Unknown and Ideal, and 
looking over the head of the savage and the animal. 

(3) The laws of society, good form, high moral tone, 
etc., with, as punishment for breaking rules, boycotting. 

Between these civilised systems the monkey gets no room 
to breathe. He is stifled out of us. 

Even if, as nations, we fight, we are far above the vulgar 
monkey, both in our weapons, our high ideal of honour, our 
Red Cross rules and observances, the whole organisation of 
our army. 

The very dividing of ourselves into sects and peoples and 
nations, with all our international laws of give and take, is a 
thing incomprehensible of any society of monkeys in the 
world. 

It is because the monkey has allowed himself to be left so 
far behind us that we meet him face to face in the Zoo, with 
iron bars between us and these our distinguished if some- 
what villainous-looking ancestors. 



A LITTLE CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 

Another thing w^hich at the same time interested and 
pained me at the Paris Zoo was the heron cage The herons 
were all right. I guess they stood on one leg, in beautiful 
form, in full storky style. But there were some gentlemen 
in the cage with exceptionally long and sharp-pointed beaks, 
and small, bead-like eyes, whose wings, of a considerable 
size as wings go, were snow-white, but whose legs were by 
no means so yard-and-a-half long as the herons'. These 
snow-white and long-beaked birds were occupied in chasing 
around and around, in the narrow limits of the bird run, a 
party of fluffy yellow ducklings, whose mother, the old grey 
duck, was defending her innocent offspring as best she 
could against these unwarrantable attacks of the tall gen- 

163 



tlemen in white. This grave quartette of worthies fixed 
their inquiring bead-hke eyes especially upon the red-raw 
back of one poor little duckling, and now and again they 
made haste to give it a sharp and sudden dig with their 
foot-long bills, against which the mother-duck was quite 
defenceless. Yet she wagged her short tail savagely when- 
ever the attacks occurred. Unfortunately, her tail was 
quite harmless, and this the white gentlemen knew. The 
mother-duck faced all four of them boldly, with an expostu- 
latory movement of the head, as she turned to look from 
one to the other of her persecutors. These, however, made 
haste to annoy her again, and the sore, raw-backed duckling 
got separated from the rest of the mother-duck's family, 
and when I left the show it was being cruelly dug at by 
the four pointed bills of the white gentlemen. Its back was 
raw and bleeding. 

Could anything more horrible and cruel be imagined than 
this herding of a defenceless duck and her six young chil- 
dren in a cage of powerful wild birds, armed with the 
weapons and instincts of vultures, whose constant amuse- 
ment was to harry and pester the poor old mother and her 
defenseless young ? What a hideous childhood ! What a 
torture to maternity ! 

I further remarked, as I always do in public Zoos, the 
ill-efi^ects of herding together in constant close companion- 
ship even like and like. 

The two otters, frisking and splashing in their circular 
pool, are evidently sick of one another's company. One of 
them makes savage attempts to bite the other in the back. 
But the years roll on. They are still and always shut to- 
gether in the same narrow pool. Their fury and resentment 
increase according to the months or years of their enforced 
companionship. The one barks petulantly at the other, 
chasing him round and round the disturbed pool. The 
waves slap at the stone rim and subside. At last the silent 
otter snaps at his barking companion, and the latter refrains 
from annoying, but only for a moment. The sickening cir- 
cular chase begins again. And it will continue to-morrow 
and to-morrow. 

Thus man sets one beast against the other, by shutting 
the two up in a narrow space, from which neither of them 
has any escape from the other's nauseating company. 

The bears, sprawling on their backs and catching crumbs 
of bread, are comical enough. 

"Oh, le gros Martin !" shrieks delighted childhood. 
But one of these bears lies in the corner alone, guarding 
with his paw a huge red sore on his nose, which the flies 
constantlv torture. 

i6a 



From time to time a spasm shakes his huge body, and he 
never joins with the others, who play up to the gallery. 

The black bear, after years of confinement, is beginning 
slowly to die in the pit. But he is still on exhibition, and 
will remain on exhibition till he dies. 



THE SURPRISES OF THE HILL. 

(Criticism of an article — written by a Lady-sportsman — 
which appeared in the "Westminster Gazette" of Satur- 
day, September i, 1906.) 

Poor stag — and what hideous thing is this in skirts, which 
brings into that realm of glorious freedom a .figure more 
gaunt and uglv than herself — the figure of Death. Death, 
on the life-giving hills, invading the dry heather and the 
nestling ferns with blood. 

Bring up yonder, under the suns and mists of heaven, the 
slaughterhouse of man. 

To hear this bonv, heartless woman prate of the charm of 
it all ! 

Sleek, sly murderess, whose feet press forward to de- 
struction, and whose ''soul" is swift unto death. 

She is permitted to tell a collection of Christian readers 
how the joy of life mounted up into her heart, as she 
tramped it over the hills, with these two lean old fossils, 
uneducated men of the lower class, lit company for this 
"educated lady" and anxious to receive her dole of silver. 

Poor stag ! 

Not one note of her description strikes true. For those 
who thirst so much after death cannot love nature. She is 
trying to hide under a silken network of soft words the 
ugly weapons of slaughter, and one sees, behind the pre- 
tended admiration of the handiwork of God, her face with 
its lean strained lips, cruel eyes, and chalk-white cheeks 
streaked with ugly crimson and fired with the desire to be 
in at the death. 

She is a good shot, too. And that is so wonderful in a 
woman ! 

"Shoot straight, sweet maid, let those who can be 
clever " 

She also seems to be inordinately proud of her long legs. 
We confess we only see in them the vehicle of so much 
hypocrisv- 

T..<;i 



THE SIGN-POST. 

(After Bunyan.) 

March 26, 1906. 

Behold, I dreamed a dream ! 

For there was a man with a bundle, and he walked along 
a dark road singing. 

Now and again his song would stop, and he would start 
a-cursing and a-swearing like the very devil at the woes of 
the road. And again the road was bright and burning hot, 
and still he toiled on. Then again he fell to heartily grum- 
bling, and did create such an uproar that somebody eased 
him of his burden a little. 

And lo, just then, he came unto a sign-post. Now the 
mind of this man was not in any way made up, and his 
heart was set on many different things. He touched divers 
trades with a careless hand, and passed on, leaving all in- 
complete. And he would grumble and so forth. 

Now here was a sign-post set right in his road. And he 
must needs choose the right or the left — nay, there were 
about three roads branched off there, leading the Lord knew 
whither. 

No man stood at the post to shout which was the good or 
which was the bad road. For had fifty men stood there all 
shouting their loudest, what could it avail, since each pas- 
senger must choose his own way, for good or for ill. 

Time was when a score of advisers stood by the sign-post, 
each shouting different advice. 

But a strong man, coming up one day, whipped them all 
away and, moreover, tore up the sign-post bodily by its roots 
and carried it away on his shoulder, as he marched off in 
the night down the middle road. "For," said he, "what 
matters it to me which road I take, so long as I go forward? 
And there be those weaker vessels passing this way who 
will miss this post and sit down and weep at it. And more 
— lo ! near by is the black Pool of Indecision, now full of 
corpses of men who have fallen trembling under the sign- 
post, men infirm of purpose who dreaded this and that road 
equallv, and to stav their misery plunged into the black 
pool."" 

But an enemy had reset the sign-post in its accustomed 
place, and there it stood, labelled: "The Right Road, The 
Left Road, The Middle Road." For it said not a word as 
to where either of these roads led. 

And the grumbler aforesaid came on with his pack and 
he sat down under the post and began to mourn. 

And as I watched, lo ! a man with a proud step and the 

166 



star of hope on his forehead came along brightly and cast a 
quick eye on the roads. And he took the middle; "For," 
said he, "so far as I am concerned, all roads lead to Heaven. 
May God bless this one to me." And he went out into the 
night ; and I heard him cry a little further along the road, 
where it swept upwards to the hill: "Look yonder — for the 
lights of Heaven shine."' 

Then came another, running along the great highway, 
and he scarcely spied the sign-post at all. He was an ideal- 
ist, and behind hmi a score of knaves with iron whips ran, 
switching them lustily. He had hired these knaves so as to 
make his pace quicker. He flew by the sign-post like light- 
ning, never even looking up to see what was writ upon it. 
And to this day, I swear, he does not know a sign-post 
stood there. He vanished, with all his knaves racing after 
him in clouds of dust, up the hill. And I heard afterwards 
that he found on the brow of the hill his ideal. 

Just at this moment I heard a plunge as of a man sunk for 
ever in deep water. 

And lo, the dark Pool of Indecision swallowed up the 
man with the burden, so that he grumbled no more. 



CHRISTMAS IN FRANCE. 

This is the time 
When the belfry chime 
Puts sorrow to shame. 
Let all who've a wish 
For a savoury dish 
Just give it a name. 

A truce to folly. 
Let's all be jolly 
The while the bells ring. 
God knows every heart 
Can contribute a part 
To the song they sing. 



E. B. P. 



All through the year an Englishman may go easily enough 
in Paris, rejoicing on his way. But at Christmas there 
comes, with a quiver of recollection, a sound that reaches 
him across the Channel, through fog, smoke, and dirty 
weather, through frost-laden atmosphere and across snowy 
fields — the sound of the chiming- of Christmas bells. 



'fc) 



167 



Those who have ever known an old-fashioned English 
Christmas, in an English village, where the old customs 
have not died out, where the ''waits" and the carol-singers 
come on Christmas Eve, all in grotesuqe masks, to sing 
under the stars the sweet and quaint old chants, some of 
which form part of the ancient history of England ; those 
who have seen the school children entertained at Christ- 
mas with a huge tree, all lit with candles, and the branches 
of which are swaying up and down under the weight of 
heavy presents ; those who have heard through the crisp air 
of a Christmas morning the long, plaintive, and beautiful 
music of the chimes which come floating from the belfry of 
the village church and have seen the villagers passing up 
under the yew trees into their beloved house of worship, 
there to sing in one accord the Christmas hymns — are never 
likely to forget an English Christmas. 

The children of course are glad enough when all these 
services and functions are over. They love to run free over 
the countryside and gather holly for the humble homes. 
And the children of the rich are being driven, in such fan- 
tastic and beautiful dresses of white lace and blue silk, to 
children's Christmas parties — which many older people love 
much better than the formal dinner parties of ordinary occa- 
sions. All is mirth and merriment. Through the night and 
across the crisp, soft snow, roll almost noiselessly, along the 
country lanes, the carriages of the rich. There are laughing 
faces of children inside. The boughs of the trees under 
which they pass are glistening with frost. There is a chil- 
dren's dance at the great Manor Hall. 

Carriage after carriage is rolling through the park gates. 
At the door of the mansion a flood of light makes the white 
snow sparkle like a Christmas card. 

Inside — holly, mistletoe, and a buzz of happy voices- — a 
great polished drawing-room in which can dance 200 chil- 
dren picked from the best families of the countryside. A 
magnificent dinner table is provided in another room for 
the little gourmands. But there are plenty of children who 
would rather dance than eat. And this charming rnaiden 
of eight will find as many partners as she wants. She looks 
like an angel. She is dressed all in white. Her lisping 
voice would tame savage lions. 

But come into this cafe. We are in Paris — not in Eng- 
land. The music and the laughter die away. *'Garcon — un 
bock, s'il vous plait." 

There is no Christmas to speak of in France- 



168 



THE SPIRIT OF MOVING. 

The Spirit of Moving is a charitable Spirit. I can testify 
to that, because some of the most interesting trifles I pos- 
sess have fallen into my hands when a human tree was 
shaking on its foundations — in other words, when a man 
was moving to a new abode. That charity which is in- 
spired by the Spirit of Moving is not altogether a virtuous 
charity. It arises rather from the fact that the man vv^ho is 
moving feels that his life is over-burdened with trifle's. He 
has opened up many long-closed cupboards, taken the lids 
off dusty boxes, and disturbed hiding-places which have 
been sealed as sacred by the cobwebs of long years. As the 
accumulated treasures poured forth from these various 
recesses, he has been confronted with the fact that he is the 
owner of an appalling quantity of what comes perilously 
near being rubbish. For a moment he loses his distinguish- 
ing power. His sense of the value of things becomes con- 
fused. He sees before him the absolute necessity of casting 
overboard a part of these long-stored treasures, which will 
encumber his new rooms, and which, by their quantity, if 
not by their quality, will bring an amused smile to the face 
of his new landlady or concierge. So he begins giving 
away. 

A friend happens to have dropped in to see him, and as 
this friend sits down and meditatively lights his pipe, inquir- 
ing the meaning of this great turning-out of drawers and 
cupboards, which have thrown up their contents upon the 
table, as the sea after a stormy night casts up its treasures 
upon the shore, he is told by the Mover that it is a move. 

Now, this friend is not altogether a fool. He has called 
in by chance, it is true. But it is also true that he knows 
how to make use of an opportunity when he meets one. He 
begins to cast an eye upon the treasures and to handle the 
same affectionately. "What a pretty pipe ! — real meer- 
schaum, I suppose?" he asks, innocently enough. 

'T believe so," says the Mover. "Take it if you care for 
it — I never smoke it. It was given to me by ( — ) I forget 
whom, really. Take it. There's such a litter of things. Do 
you think you could help me to close this bag?" 

"This bag will never close unless you take that case of 
razors out of it." 

The Mover (after some tugging) : 'T believe you are 
right. Take it out." 

The Visitor: "By the way, these razors are interesting. 
The handles are carved somewhat in the Japanese style, is 
it not so ?" 

169 



The Mover: "Oh, do you care for the razors? Do pray 
take them, and this cursed bag will perhaps consent to 
close." 

(The razors are put in the pocket of the visitor.) 

So it goes on. At last all the Mover's trunks are packed, 
and the friend, with his pockets and his arms full, says 
good-bye. 

The Mover: "Good-bye, my dear friend, you have helped 
me to pack — always an annoying business. Come and see 
me next week in my new rooms. John, call a cab for this 
gentleman. Good-night, old man. You will be home in 
half an hour." 

The visitor clears ofif. "God bless you in your new home," 
he says. And he proceeds on his way, a happier and a 
wealthier man. 

This sad-faced visitor always puts in an opportune ap- 
pearance when he hears that one of his friends is moving. 
He comes with the proper funeral aspect, just as the waits 
arrive with a hearse. That is why his room is full of rare 
and costly curios — old Arabian daggers, paintings by Ru- 
bens, real ivory paper knives, delicately chiselled — the over- 
flow from many a packer's wealth. 



THE ANT. 

April 2^, 1906. 

The other day I was astonished to hear, in the ordinarily 
quiet and decorous cafe where I go at four o'clock to take 
my "lait chaud" (because the French tea is so often abom- 
inable), a great noise, and to see the gargons running with 
looks of agitation ; while above a glazed screen the florid 
head of the wife of the patron slowly rose, sun-like, into 
the sphere of general curiosity. f 

A man, with a somewhat bronzed face, had laid down his 
"Figaro" before him on the table. He still grasped with 
his left hand the long stick to which this newspaper was al- 
ways attached ; but with his other .hand he gesticulated 
violently, pointing a withering finger at something which 
three gargons, bent like wind-swept corn before his wrath, 
were straining their eyes to see. The Englishman (for so 
his slight accent pronounced him) was declaring that surely 
it was an extraordinary thing that he, fresh arrived from 
an expedition which had reached from the East Coast of 
Africa the densest interior of that continent — that he, who 
had suffered from snake-bites, who had fallen prone under 
the paw of the gorilla, who had been teased nightly by the 

170 



poisonous mosquito and swept down half dead upon a couch 
of wet reeds, by the devastating malaria, should not, after 
reaching through all perils the shores of an established civil- 
isation, be plagued in a public cafe by the appearance of a 
hideous insect which even at that moment was crossing 
slowdy from an article on the state of the strikers at Lenz 
into a paragraph dealing with some horrible drama of low 
life. 

A man on my left summed up the whole situation in a 
nutshell. 

"There are none so fastidious," said he, "as those who 
have lived for a while outside the pale of civilisation ; none 
so ultra-refined as those who have just ceased to be savage." 
At that moment the man holding the "Figaro" fell into a 
fresh paroxysm of rage and, flicking the unfortunate ant 
into the air (for it was none other than this harmless and 
industrious specimen of the insect world which had been 
tasting the sweets of literature for a few brief moments), 
he laid about him w^ith a will, and, scattering the unfortu- 
nate waiters right and left, bounced from the shop, a monu- 
mental example of a man who, fresh escaped from the gi- 
gantic savagery of the jungle, takes the slightest departure 
on the part of human events from the beaten path of strict 
decorum as a gross and intentional insult to himself. 

Revolving this strange philosophy in my mind, I paid for 
my hot milk, and walked thoughtfully away. 

The old savage in us will out, even though it come under 
the guise of a rebellion against savagery. 



THE GREAT ROOM. 

July 27, 1906. 

I saw a great room, with vv^ndows of a rich colour, 
through which the sun poured. Oaken bookcases lined the 
lofty walls, and thousands and thousands of costly vol- 
umes stood on the shelves. Here and there, on a niche of 
stone, or a table beautifully inlaid, stood a work of art, rare 
and costly — a piece of sculpture, alabaster-white, a painting 
of priceless beauty. 

The vast chamber, lit wath shafts of light, gave one at 
once the sense of awe and of admiration. The ancient oak 
rafters of the roof, standing forth naked in all their strength, 
were splashed with shafts of blue light, and again others lost 
themselves in blackness. 

There was no sign of life. All these books, the result of 

171 



so much learning, stood mute and dumb on their shelves. 
The sculptured fauns and fairies lifted themselves in ail 
attitudes of graceful silence, and their lips seemed parted in 
the effort to speak. 

But one heard no voice or sound. 

At last I espied, far down the room, seated in a magnifi- 
cent oak chair like a throne, the figure of an old and wrink- 
led man. He was reading one of the books that belonged 
to his great library. He never lifted his head as he read. 
A thoughtful smile rested upon his face. 

1 felt that the great room was no longer empty, was no 
longer a tomb of, dead writings and dusty manuscripts. For 
there sat there, in the midst of the silence, the man with 
the brain which worked. 



INTERVIEW WITH M. T. HOMELLE, DIRECTOR 
OF THE LOUVRE. 

The following article, resulting from a personal inter- 
view v/hich I had with M. Homelle, was offered by me to 
the "New York Herald" and refused. I then handed it to 
Burlingham, a philosopher, who, without changing a single 
word of my MS., kindly secured its immediate acceptance, 
the day following its refusal by Mr. Gordon Bennett. 

M. Homelle's readiness to grant me a long interview in 
his private residence may be explained by the fact that I 
presented my card as one of the students of the atelier 
Merson in the Ecole des Beaux- Arts. M. Homelle's first 
words to me were : "i^Tonsieur Merson is an intimate friend 
of mine. You are welcome. Come in, and I will tell ypu 
what I can about the Louvre." ^ 

Tuesday, December 17, 1907. 

"We don't want to clean our pictures as they clean them 
in Berlin,'' said M. T. Homelle, of the Ministry of Fine 
Arts, and director of the Louvre Museum, when I saw him 
yesterday at his residence under the Pavilion Mollien ad- 
joining the Musee du Louvre. "I knov/ all about the 
Kaisers Gallery in Berlin, and there is no doubt v/hatever 
that they clean their pictures far too much. True, the dirt 
is removed by this process, but who is to say that the varnish 
is not also destroyed, which leaves the naked paint open to 
the corroding influence of the air." 

"Are the pictures regularly dusted?" I asked. 

"Well, we cannot entrust an army of guardians with the 

172 



task of daily flapping and flicking at these priceless pictures 
with dusters, as we should order a domestic to go and dust 
our furniture daily. Great damage would thus be done. 
From time to time the surface dust is carefully removed 
from the pictures. By constantly beeswaxing the floors we 
keep the dust from accumulating in the galleries of the mu- 
seum." 

"What about the dingy frames?" I next asked. 

"Xow, j\Ir. Duveen mentions that these frames need re- 
newing, but this is a task which must necessarily be ac- 
complished b}' degrees. We began last year w^ith the Rem- 
brandts, which were all placed in new frames, and naturally 
this makes the contrast with the old ones all the stronger. 
We shall proceed to re frame the other pictures by degrees. 
But this is an enormous task, involving a great expense, and 
we shall certainly not consider frames wdien the question of 
purchasing a valuable picture arises. We shall give prefer- 
ence to the possession of the work of art — even in an old 
frame !" 

"Is it true," I asked, "that many priceless pictures by Old 
Masters are stored away unseen in the vaults of the 
Louvre ?" 

"We have some fine pictures thus stored," was the reply. 
"But — qu'est-ce que vous voulez ! There is not room for all. 
Mr. Duveen, like many other critics, if he found himself 
face to face w^ith the double problems of expense and space 
for pictures which constantly confront us, would be consid- 
erably staggered." 



(Leaving M. Homelle, I now pursued my inquiries in an- 
other direction, which he kindly indicated to me.) 

In the absence of M. Leprieur, the conservator of the 
pictures as well as of the frames in the Louvre, M. Jean 
Guiffrey, who represents M. Leprieur, made the following 
statement to me : 

"There are two methods of cleaning or renovating valu- 
able pictures. The first is simply to remove the entire coat 
of varnish, and lay the painting bare. In thus removing 
the varnish it is practically impossible to avoid removing 
some of the paint with it, because the varnish of a picture 
which has become mellow has mingled to a certain extent 
with the paint. Not only is this the case, but we have to 
face the fact that the surface of a painting is almost always 
uneven. Here and there the paint is thicker than in other 
parts. There are (to use the French word) 'empatements,' 
where the paint stands out sometimes a quarter of an inch 

173 



from the rest of the surface. It is absolutely impossible to 
remove the coat of varnish uniformly in such cases, and 
these projections of paint have to come off. For this reason 
we do not care about removing the varnish and exposing the 
painting which lies underneath, as they do in Berlin. 

"The second manner of preserving and renewing the sur- 
face of a painting consists in putting another layer of var- 
nish on the old one. This certainly results, after four coats 
of varnish, in a yellowness of tone being imparted to the 
whole painting. But we do not find this disagreeable. 
Much of the beauty which is admired in Rembrandts, for 
instance, is sometimes caused by this yellowness or mellow- 
ness of tone. 

"As for dusting the pictures, we cannot dust them with 
cloths nor with feather dusters. Cloths are too hard, and 
feather dusters, when one of the feathers happens to break, 
scratch a painting terribly. We dust them with cotton-wool, 
which is sufficiently soft to cause no injury." 



THE LOUVRE PICTURES. 

SOME UNPUBLISHED NOTES RESULTING FROM 
A PRIVATE INTERVIEW WITH M. G. BERGER, 
DEPUTY, MEMBRE DE LTNSTITUT, PRESIDENT 
DE LA SOCIETE DES AMIS DU LOUVRE. 

December i8, 1907. 

On Tuesday night I interviewed at his residence in the 
Rue Legendre, Paris, Monsieur G. Berger, Deputy, Membre 
de ITnstitut, and President des "Amis du Louvre." Seated 
in his magnificent private library, surrounded by tapestries, 
sculpture, paintings, and rare editions of French master- 
pieces, richly bound, this gentleman gave me his views on 
the subject of the Louvre Museum pictures, the conserva- 
tion of their colours, and their new frames. 

"First of all," said Mr. Berger — "and you only find me in 
my library at this hour because I am not feeling so well as 
I might — I may say that the interesting article published in 
the 'Herald' of Tuesday last entirely omits to mention the 
important question of glazing the pictures or hanging them 
without glass. 

"It has been found absolutely necessary to glaze the pic- 
tures in the National Gallery of London, because the atmos- 
phere of that city is often heavily charged with an actually 

174 



gritty fog, which would destroy the surface of any painting 
m a short time. 

"Here in the Louvre we have very few of our paintings 
under glass. An exception is the 'Joconde' of Leonardo da 
Vinci — one of that great painter's most marvellous works, 
but it has not been a satisfactory solution of the problem, 
because under glass the picture looks like a large mirror, 
and. is full of unexpected and puzzling reflections. 

"On the question of varnish the remarks printed in the 
'Herald' interview with M. Homelle with regard to the tone 
given by four coats of varnish over a Rembrandt, are quite 
correct, but I may tell you that we cannot put several coats 
of varnish on a Rubens, because Rubens painted on a pre- 
pared groundwork of a reddish tint, and if we varnish his 
canvases the result is quite impossible. 

''The whole question of the preservation of pictures is a 
most difficult one. They must perish in time. 

"As for the Societe des Amis du Louvre, of which I am 
president, I will only mention that, though I founded this 
society only five or six years ago, we now have 2,546 mem- 
bers, each paying the annual subscription of 20 francs, and 
that we have already expended 350,000 francs in the pur- 
chase for the galleries of the Louvre Museum of paintings, 
tapestries, and statues. 

"Our latest acquisition, for which we paid 18,500 francs, 
is a splendid eighteenth century Ecuelle, or ancient soup 
tureen, which was made by Thomas Germain, the celebrated 
orfevre, and which bears the arms of Carnidal Farnese, who 
presented it to the Pope. This beautiful work of art can 
now be seen in the Louvre. The committee of our society 
decides on the purchase of these articles. 

"All the members of our society have special privileges 
afforded them. They can obtain entrance into private mu- 
seums all over the Continent, and special facilities of obser- 
vation are granted them by the Conservators of Art Gal- 
leries. 

'Tt may be interesting to mention that in 1793 the 'Con- 
vention Nationale' decided that the Louvre should belong, 
in its entirety, to the Beaux-Arts. On the strength of this 
former decision I have been constantly demanding the ex- 
pulsion of the Ministre des Colonies from the Louvre, that 
we may have more room for our art treasures. The Min- 
istre des Colonies is now moving into a new habitation. An 
ancient convent in the Quartier St. Germain (Institution 
des Freres de la Doctrine Chretienne, Rue Oudinot), Paris, 
is being repaired to accommodate him, and within a year 
hence we shall be able to occupy his apartments and offices. 



**The Ministre des Finances will next have to go. I am 
constantly renewing my applications in the Chamber for this 
expulsion, and I am within my rights owing to the ancient 
decree of the Convention Nationale. 

''We have a special reason for wishing to obtain posses- 
sion of the space in the Louvre now belonging to the Min- 
istre des Finances. In this very portion of the Louvre there 
is a usine, or plant, for the manufacture of electricity for 
the lighting of that part of the building which he and his 
staff occupy. In order to produce this electricity there are 
machinery and boilers which emit a very black smoke 
charged heavily with soot, which, penetrating into the win- 
dows of that portion of the Louvre, where the Picture Gal- 
leries are situated, can cause great damage to these works 
of art, just as does the soot-charged air of London in the 
case of your National Gallery pictures. 

"When the Ministre des Finances has gone, the whole 
of the Louvre will be devoted to the preservation of the 
national collection of works of art. 

''By the way, I notice that they do not lose pictures in 
the London National Gallery by theft at anything like the 
rate we do here." 

These remarks terminated the interview, and, taking leave 
of my genial host, I descended his marble staircase and 
emerged into the starlit night, a wiser, but not necessarily a 
sadder man. 



CONAN DOYLE AND THE FRENCH. 

October, 1906. 

"I do not fear God if He knows all," said an ordinary 
sinner who has become famous. But those are greatly to 
be feared who know only half. The "Figaro" in a delight- 
ful and very temperate article dealing with the translation 
into French of a certain book by Conan Doyle, the hero of 
which is an idiotic, sometimes heroic, funny Frenchman, 
quotes the above remark, apropos of those writers of any 
nation who discuss the peculiarities of another race than 
their own, before having even lived among those whom they 
attempt to describe. 

Conan Doyle's hero is a certain Frenchman, by name 
Colonel Gerard. And what an idiot this colonel is ! He 
never manages to grasp the true sense of any of his sur- 
roundings. Fascinated with his own admiration of himself, 
he believes that everybody else is admiring him. But it is 
especially among the English that he makes himself the 



laughing-stock of all. He comes to England and takes part 
in a fox-hunt, and manages to shoot the fox, and when ex- 
pressions of indignation are heard on every side, he believes 
that he is being covered with praise by the whole Hunt. 

He also fancies that every woman he meets is in love 
with him. He is occasionally capable of really heroic ac- 
tions, and has actually saved desperate situations in French 
campaigns. 

This surprising imbecile, however, plays the desperate 
fool in times of peace, and his presumption and innate 
vanity are especially noticeable when he crosses the Chan- 
nel and lives amongst the English. He goes in for boxing, 
and, finding himself worsted, bites the ear of his adversary, 
and afterwards boasts of his deed in a French cafe, but he 
makes the mistake of translating the rage of the English 
onlookers onto ardent praise of his valour. 

In fact, the Colonel Gerard is an intolerable ass, a vain 
coxcomb, a masterpiece of folly. Yet this is the man who, 
at each step of his life, is entrusted with difficult and peril- 
ous missions, which he carried out with an unheard-of sang- 
froid and heroism, that sort of heroism which faces calmly 
a frightful death, which must be met alone, and which is 
stripped of all glory. And the colonel always brings these 
missions to a successful issue. 

'T fear," says the writer in the "Figaro," ''that this colonel 
may have had entrusted to him as an extra mission the task 
of showing to Englishmen what is the author's idea of a 
typical French character. And a Frenchman who read the 
book shuts it with a sense of irritation." 

Why? 

Well, let us consider. Is this really the truth, and the 
whole truth, about the French character — this mixture of 
fool and hero — this empty head, where nothing except the 
idea of glory can find a resting-place? Have they, the 
French, really so much presumption, and false-confidence, 
such utter lack of comprehension? 

Now, the champion French bragger — a much more tactful 
and charming bragger than this Colonel Gerard — was 
Henry IV. He had some spirit, and there is little doubt that 
nobody would have made game of him without his knowing 
it. But then he was a real Frenchman — not made by 
Conan Doyle. 

Again, a coxcomb who had some reason to be such — 
considerably more reason than this poor Colonel Gerard — 
was the Marechal de Richelieu. But he happened to be a 
cunning diplomat into the bargain. 

Unhappily one finds in this Colonel Gerard, whether 



placed there intentionally or not, all the faults which stran- 
gers are accustomed to impute to the French. Constant 
allusion is made, for instance, to this "legerete," which ap- 
pears to be the national vice of the French, according to 
the view of Conan Doyle. 

Now, in order that "public opinion'' should form itself, it 
is quite sufficient that a small number of people should begin 
to talk about what they do not know. This colonel, so 
grotesque and heroic, is none other than the creation of 
Conan Doyle. He is not a compatriot of the French. He 
is simply an Englishman's idea of what a Frenchman is. 
That, of course, in itself, may make this hero somewhat in- 
teresting. 

This trifling volume, written by a popular English author 
who has never resided for any length of time in France, 
and does not even intimately know the language, has been 
put upon the market to meet a popular demand. 

But on the principle that a frightful caricature is better 
than no portrait at all, the "Figaro" article commends this 
discussion by one nation of the weaknesses of another. ''Let 
us, however, remember," it adds, ''that since those nearest 
to us, even our own brother, may have zones of thought and 
character into which we who live beside them day after 
day can never enter, the difficulties of judging fairly, impar- 
tially and thoroughly the inmost characteristics of a nation 
whose history, read through the clouded mirror of another 
language, is all that an untravelled writer can see of it — 
these difficulties are enormous." 

Let us grasp the fact that a flying visit to France, how- 
ever faithfully we may "follow the Man from Cook's," 
speaking a few words here and there to coachmen, waiters, 
and guardians of museums, will not permit us to pose as 
writers capable of plumbing the depths of character of so 
subtle and elusive a people as the French, whose customs 
are founded on an ancient history which differs so essen- 
tially from our own. 

The first thing to throw overboard, when making a study 
of the people of a different nationality from our own, is 
our preconceived notion of their general characteristics and 
our exceedingly vulgar and unlearned general impression of 
them gathered from the ignorant remarks of our fellow- 
citizens, the great majority of whom have probably never 
crossed the Channel in their lives. For instance, to quote 
a few hackneyed phrases — the French, because they are 
quick at seizing an argument, and understanding what you 
say, and a great deal of what you do not say, are accused 
of — legerete — whatever that means. A sort of lightness and 

178 



shallowness of character, a surface wisdom and so on. The 
fact is that the typical Frenchman is just as cautious, honest, 
and reticent as any Englishman. He is thrifty, witty, hard- 
working, and gay — you may call the result of this combina- 
tion legerete if you like. 



THE "FUNNY FRENCHMAN." 

It was not the funny and the comical Frenchman that is 
so popular on an English stage who led France through the 
great crisis of her historical life and brought her safe and- 
sound into the position she now holds, as the First Real Re- 
public in the world — (America, eaten up by trusts, is no 
longer a free Republican country except by name). One 
can live for months in Paris and never run across the "funny 
Frenchman" that is so well known across the footlights of 
a London stage, or between the covers of a book by Conan 
Doyle. 

A great part of the Entente Cordiale at present hangs 
upon the acceptation by the British middle classes of the 
theory that the "funny Frenchman" has got no harm in him, 
and might just as v/ell be petted as laughed at. There is no 
real, serious friendship involved in this view. 



A HUGE JOKE. 

And this explains the fact that the Entente, though it 
will one day become a great reality, is at present more or 
less of a huge joke, which it pleases the popular British 
mind to perpetrate. When the two nations become more 
firmly united and begin really to understand one another — 
and there are obstacles on both sides — then will be cemented 
a friendship which will be of sufficient force to turn the 
balance in any international dispute and to dictate Peace 
to the civilised world. 



DOME MANNERS. 

October 17, 1908. 
By the way, I must just write a line on the Dome, with- 
out which no Paris book would be complete. 

"The Dome" is a cafe which stands at the intersection of 



Hi^^^^^lH^^nBH 



the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Boulevard Raspail, 
and for some reason has been made the headquarters of 
American artists and others. 

For some reason the men from our atelier in the Ecole 
des Beaux-Arts never go up there. Perhaps the cafe is 
too far off or too full of "foreigners." 

Eberhardt, the sculptor, went up there once, but was so 
disgusted with the place that he never went again. 

Burlingham goes there. Frost, of the ''Flerald," is not 
unknown in the Dome. Worst of all, Davidson and his dog 
are to be found there. And that leads me to speak of Dome 
manners. 

To begin with, you can never get a man to speak of any- 
thing but billiards in the Dome. And the curious thing is 
that these young fellows believe they are playing biUiards — 
on a table without pockets, if you please, and about one- 
third the size of a real English billiard table. 

They are as solemn as anything about their billiards up 
at the Dome and they pay up like little men for a game. 

I would not trouble to play, for I do not play except on a 
full-sized table with pockets, such as my father possessed 
in our Hampshire rectory — a county where no good-sized 
house is without its billiard-room. 

Burlingham has often told me that I ought to know more 
of these men up at the Dome. But 1 state here with all due 
respect for them, that they are neither such good artists 
nor such good players as the Frenchmen in my atelier, and 
that I have not, moreover, time to make their acquaintance. 

As one of them most justly said one night in my hearing 
(in a flash of lucidity) : 

"By Gee ! there are some American artists come over 
here to study art — they don't picl^ up much art, but they 
learn to play a rattling good game of billiards !" 

And the girls you see in there ! I was amazed a^, first. 
Of all the harem-scarem, loose-robed, just-got-out-of-bed- 
or-going-to-take-a-bath aspect — well, go and see for your- 
self. 

Clouds of cigarette smoke and plenty of American accent. 
Oh, Blum, do come away ; I can't stick the Dome any 
longer ! 

Blum is more sensible than the others, but he must go to 
the Dome to meet Davidson and his dog. 

This Dome is an eccentric excrescence on the face of 
Paris. Like a boil or a "bouton" on the fair white neck of a 
beautiful lady. 

Jeanne, well — she is a lovely French girl who goes there 
sometimes. 

i8o 



But do come away, Blum ; I can't stand that Dome. Per- 
haps the most redeeming feature of the Dome is De Ker- 
strat. He is a tah Frenchman, who walks about with bare 
feet (encased only in sandals), a fine beard, and a pleasant 
American accent which he picked up in the States. 11 is 
name reminds me of some horrible surgical operation, but 
his nature — ah, there is one of Nature's finest gentlemen ! 

Come on, Blum ; I'm going. 

And, by the way (as I see Blum is not likely to budge 
for ten minutes }et), it was De Kerstrat that went with 
Burlingham to Switzerland, along the dusty road from 
Paris, walking all the way, with sandals on- their feet. 
There was something fine about this pilgrimage — the two 
young men turning their backs on the gay city of Paris and 
setting their faces towards the snow-white mountains, hun- 
dreds of miles away. It was the call of Nature which sum- 
moned them out of the Dome Cafe and along the roads and 
then ever upwards and Excelsior till the snowy peaks were 
reached. 

They were like blind men groping in the darkness, who 
feel, though they cannot see it, that there must be light 
somewhere, and the freshness and silence of Nature, and 
the grandeur beyond all bocks and billiard-tables. 

So they started. 

Neither had more than forty francs in his pocket, nor 
could they tell where the next funds would come from. 
The future was, for them, embodied in the snow-capped 
peaks which they had to reach. 

From village to village they marched, just like the pil- 
grims of the olden time, following the call of their inner 
conscience — or, to go further back, like the Wise Men who 
followed the Star in the East. 

"Which is the way to Switzerland?" is the only question 
they had to ask on the road. 

And when hotel managers stood mutely amazed at the 
demand, or cafe garqons dropped whole trays of aperitives 
and stared a?, hast at such a question, the two pioneers shook 
the dust of such and such a village off their feet and went 
smilinglv on. 

At last they saw the mountains. And here is a photo- 
graph of Burlingham with a stick in his hand pointing out 
Mount Blanc to his friend. 

It was what Burlingham calls "the W^anderlust" that led 
them so far from the Cafe Dome, so far from the gay boule- 
vards, into those great snow^y silences where the virgin 

i8i 



mountains are shy of the gaze of man and blush suddenly 
crimson while you look at them. 

Here Nature rings the changes down the whole harmoni- 
ous scale of colours, as though the startling music of a peal 
of bells took living shape before your eyes and grew incar- 
nate in the luminous lines of glowing mountains. 



MISS LOIE FULLER IN PARIS 

HER YOUNG "MUSES" DANCE IN OUR CARME- 
LITE CONVENT. 

August 23, 1909. 

Miss Loie Fuller is, at the moment I write this, staying 
in Paris, at the Bedford Hotel in the Rue de I'Arcade. She 
has brought with her a troupe of fifty dancers (her "Muses" 
she calls them), who rehearse nightly in a large room that 
looks out on to the winter garden of the hotel, where de- 
lighted guests sit and smoke their cigars or fan themselves, 
listening to the refreshing music of the fountains in the 
gardens and watching the graceful evolutions of these girl 
dancers, whom Miss Fuller has for long trained in her 
own footsteps and who will leave with her for Ontario, 
Boston, and New York at the end of this month. 

Among these girls is Mrs. Hoff, an American lady, whose 
grace ravishes all who have been fortunate enough to see 
her dancing. The charm of masses of brown hair and a su- 
perb figure is further heightened by eyes of an almost Rus- 
sian wildness and depth of penetration. 

On August 10 I had the pleasure of inviting Miss Loie 
Fuller and all her party of Muses to visit the Carmelite 
Convent at No. 25, Rue Denfert Rochereau, where my 
friend the American sculptor, Mr. R. Eberhardt, lives a 
life of delicious retirement and unceasing toil in the quiet 
sanctuary afforded him by this convent, deserted by the Sis- 
ters of Mercy some ten years ago. He was a pupil of the 
great French sculptor Mercier, of whose studio in the Ecole 
des Beaux Arts he was elected Massier, or head student — 
a position he held for a year and a half. 

Mr. Eberhardt's vast atelier on the ground floor over- 
looks on one side the quiet, open-air quadrangle where for- 
merly the sisters of this religious order pursued for genera- 
tions their devotions. In the centre of this quadrangle, and 
surrounded by a wild luxuriance of tall flowers, a great 
carved wooden cross, 15 feet high, is erected on a noble 

182 



stone pedestal. This cross bears the inscription in French : 
"La Reverende Mere Marie Hyacinth, Etant Prieure," while 
on the pedestal one reads a Latin inscription to the effect 
that the convent was erected in year 1604, underwent first 
repairs in 1800, and again was repaired in 1856. 

This wild garden, haunted only by the butterflies and the 
thrushes, is surrounded on all four sides by the old grey- 
gold walls of the convent. When the sisters were in resi- 
dence this garden was always carpeted by one mass of white 
flowers — snowdrops in the winter, other blossoms as white 
in the summer. This exquisite carpet did not outlive their 
care, and has disappeared with them. 

It was to this charming retreat that we came at two 
o'clock on a glorious August afternoon, and twenty-four 
girls of Miss Fuller's troupe quickly discarded their summer 
dresses for the gauzy veils in which they were to perform 
some of the graceful evolutions and religious dances around 
the great central cross "en pleine air." 

'Tn this case," Miss Fuller explained, "the dance ex- 
presses religious emotion. There are no words. There is 
simply music and action." 

There certainly was ! The effect was enchanting ; and a 
photographer, whose services had been requisitioned for 
the occasion, took half a score of photographs, while the 
Prince and Princess Troubetzkoy, who accompanied us from 
their charming residence at the Porte Maillot, where lunch 
had been served in the garden for all the dancers and other 
guests, had brought along with them their celebrated Siber- 
ian wolves who, tame as cats, posed before the photographer 
several times. 

Prince Paul Troubetzky is a well-known Russian sculptor, 
and did not lose the opportunity of modelling the head of 
one of Miss Fuller's younger American dancers — little Kar- 
lene Carmen. 

Thus was brought to a conclusion an afternoon full of 
interest, when the silence of the cloisters was for once awak- 
ened by the gay laughter of the young girls who tripped 
between the tall sunflowers in their robe of shining silk. 



SOME NOTES WORTH REMEMBERING IN 

PARIS. 

February 18, 1908. 
The French, with the exception of the newspaper vendors 
(who are as smart on a machine as the boys in London) are 
bad bicycle riders, but good automobile drivers. 

183 



The reason is that the bravery of the average Frenchman 
is not quite of the reckless order — indeed, in a crowded city- 
he is nervous on these sHght machines, and will run into 
you. 

On an automobile, however, the driver feels that he has 
power and weight on his side, and drives with courage, dex- 
terity, judgment, and ability. 



Policemen are scoundrels, cruel to horses, but will give 
you directions if you ask them politely. 
Cochers are very stupid. 

Post office officials and railway officials are stupid. 
On the "Metro'' selfishness is the predominant feature. 



The prettiest girls are to be seen on the Metropolitan first 
class during the hours when the theatres em^pty themselves 
of their adorable silken-robed contents. 

Also in the early morning, from 7 till 8.30 on a fine spring 
or summer's day, you may notice eight or ten pretty girls in 
as many minutes walking, frequently bareheaded, to their 
shops or to the market-places. 

Shopkeepers do not want to sell you things at first while 
you are a stranger, but they will give you credit afterwards, 
when they know you better. When first you enter their 
shop they look at you with a glance in which distrust and 
suspicion are mingled with impatience and disdain. Who is 
this foreigner, coming to disturb their afternoon siesta, or 
their chat with an old and friendly customer, about the wick- 
edness of the next-door neighbour? Doubtless he is "An- 
glichman," who has looked in to ask in which direction is 
the Opera House, or what hour it is by the clock, or to 
demand change for a bad five-franc piece. 

Once they see your money and learn that you v/ish to 
purchase something they soften a little. But many weeks 
must pass, during which you must visit their shop regularly 
and make occasional purchases before they will give you 
anything like a welcome or show you the best goods they 
possess. 

When once they find out that you are not a flying visitor 
to Paris, but are earning your living amongst them, they will 
do better by you. 



184 



THE PARISIAN CONCIERGE. 

i 

Beware of the Concierge of Paris. Even Parisians them- 
selves hold her up in witty illustrated journals and philo- 
sophic articles, as a force which must be feared and ac- 
counted for. 

''You can buy a smile from her for five francs — but it 
soon fades away," said excellent Barrymore, an American 
artist wdio had to do with one of the grimmest of these 
crocodile-skinned warriors who without wear petticoats and 
sheep's clothing, but within are ravening wolves, seeking 
whom they may devour. 

Kind English gents, let me warn you to beware of the 
Concierge — even when she seems to be absent. 

Look upon her closed door and you will probably see 
this leeend: 



'&' 



"LA CONCIERGE EST DANS L'ESCALIER." 

What do these printed words mean ? 

They may certainly be taken in their literal translation as 
meaning that the female Concierge is on the staircase. But 
they may also mean that she has gone out to do some shop- 
ping, or to see a friend (if so grim a person can conde- 
scend to possess a "friend"). At any rate, she is not in the 
Conciergerie. 

Her eye may be resting upon you from an upper window. 

When at last she comes towards you, she comes with the 
firm step of a conquering heroine, under whose feet are 
ruthlessly trampled the dearest wishes of her shivering and 
terror-stricken locataires — and in whose large relentless 
hands lie the withered fortunes and the unforwarded letters 
of those who have left her house and gone forth to seek 
other lodging. 

O, dreadful Concierge, I come, with chattering teeth, to 
ask you if any registered letters have arrived for me ; or if 
any of my bolder friends have dared to beard you in your 
den, seeking to see me. 

But when the hard glint of your eyes strikes upon me, 
my heart fails me, and without uttering a word I press a 
two-franc piece into your greasy palm and slink, ashamed, 
away. 

And that is often the very best thing you can do ! 

What? You wish that I shall argue with her, cajole, en- 
treat, or damn her with faint blame about a missing letter, 
because there are no coals in my room, because the chimney 
Smokes ? 

185 



Poor innocent counsellor, regard the weight of her arm 
and the solidity of her footwear. 

She will not even answer your questions. But she will ask 
you another — and one that strikes terror into even the stout- 
est male heart : 

"Do you wipe your feet upon the mat, before you go 
upstairs ?" 

You walk sorrowfully away, mute and guilty, like the 
rich man in the Bible who was suddenly ordered to sell all 
his possessions and give them to the poor. 



PARIS PRESS. 

February 27, 1908. 

There is no Fleet Street in Paris. 

The newspapers are all scattered about anywhere ; the 
''Figaro" in the Rue Drouot — its stately and beautiful of- 
fices a model for newspaper owners the world over ; the 
"Petit Parisien" in the Rue Lafayette ; the "Matin" occupy- 
ing the corner of the Faubourg Poissonniere and the Boule- 
vard Montmartre ; and the "Journal," 100, Rue Richelieu. 

The "Daily Mail" hangs out in a modest establishment in 
the Rue du Sentier, close to the "Matin," and the "New 
York Herald" boasts a business office in the Avenue de 
I'Opera, No. 59, and a printing and editorial office in the 
Rue du Louvre. 

The "Temps," at 5, Boulevard des Italiens, more staid 
and official, condescends nevertheless to wear upon its lofty 
forehead, to the amusement of passing boulevardiers, those 
"Affiches Lumineuses," where the magic hand of electricity 
writes at night-time extraordinary items of news, mingled 
with hair advertisements. ^ 

The "Echo de Paris" makes its magnificent home on the 
second floor of one of the finest buildings in the Place de 
rOpera, absolutely adjoining the great Opera House. Here 
the very staircase leading to the fine editoi"ial and other of- 
fices of this paper is lined with clever political caricatures 
of those who took a prominent part in the Dreyfus case, and 
other men of note. 

Courtesy to strangers (if these have any pretension to 
being journalists themselves) is a feature of those who di- 
rect and control the French Press. If I ask to see an editor, 
he not only comes downstairs or invites me upstairs without 
placing a hundred obstacles between himself and me, as in 
dear old Fleet Street, but when he arrives he has time to 

186 



talk a little, and the "Matin" will even accept a good news 
story in English, pay you for it, and turn it into French 
themselves. The "Temps" paid me on a liberal scale for 
an article of some international importance. 

Monsieur Franz Reichel, chief sporting editor of the 
"Figaro," at one time entertained an article in French from 
my pen on the "A\'el]man Polar Expedition." But after full 
consideration he decided that this expedition was probably 
a piece of American bluff and that it would not do to go 
seriously before the French reading public with a detailed 
description of the proposed expedition. Subsequent events 
seem to have fully justified his opinion. So I contented my- 
self with having had a glimpse of the most interesting and 
decorous journalistic office in the world, with its many old- 
fashioned chiming clocks, its fine carved oak staircases, its 
collection of historical pictures, its general air of refinement 
and culture, and, most interesting of all, the dwarf in livery 
who condescended to take my card in. 

As for my article, it was printed in an English paper. 

I may add that the Saturday Literary Supplement of the 
''Figaro'' is full of interest to English people, containmg, 
as it almost invariably does, valuable critiques on various 
phases of English history and on English prose and poetry. 

The French illustrated weekly papers, such as "ITllustra- 
tion," "La Vie Au Grand Air," "Le Monde Illustre," "La 
Vie Parisienne," and "Le Rire," ai-e magnificently produced, 
and often contain articles scintillating with wit and gaiety. 



Strangers arriving in Paris — those at least who have any 
elementary knowledge of French — quicklv pick up an ac- 
quaintance with the French Press, and they do wisely in 
devoting a little of their time thus, for a nation's virtues 
and foibles can be gauged as much by studying its journals 
and its literature as by visiting its museums and places of 
entertainment. Especially is this so with regard to France. 
The springs of the French Press are actuated by forces 
utterly unknown in England. The anti-Dreyfusards, with 
the Clergy and the Army behind them, have a whole regi- 
ment of papers which express their views and fight for their 
opinions. The Freemasons and the Freethinkers have their 
organs. The Jews find a champion in a journal whose ed- 
itor is a Jew, and a very capable editor into the bargain. 
But, apart from religion and politics, the French Press is 
certainly inspired by high ideals. Many of its daily articles 
are written with as much care as would be devoted in Eng- 

187 



land to articles written for the less ephemeral publication 
afforded by magazines such as the "Pall Mall'' or the "Corn- 
hill." We find in "Le Journal," day after day, stories by 
members of the Academic, stories which are perfectly elab- 
orated and which bear that sort of finish which it is very 
rare to discover in English daily papers, which generally 
confine themselves to giving us plain facts. One has not 
long kept in touch with the French Press before one gets 
accustomed to a thrill of joyful expectancy in opening one's 
favourite French paper ; and in reading these witty and 
daring articles we may be sure of a good laugh or a satis- 
factory shudder. 

The scope of these notes does not allow me to make more 
than a passing mention of the deadly and interminable war- 
fare waged between those two daily papers, the "Matin" and 
the "Journal," as the roots of this conflict penetrate pro- 
foundly into questions of Governmental policy and national 
and personal integrity which could not even be summarised 
within the limits of this chapter. The m.ere delineation of 
the bases of this conflict would confront us with a score of 
still smouldering- scandals, such as the alleged blackmailing 
of Leopold II., the action of the "Matin" in the Humbert 
aflfair, in the Remy affaire, in the confiscation of the Char- 
treuse, and in the remarkable "Liquidation des Congrega- 
tions." 

The better-class French dailies at one sou are run on a 
higher grade, with more attention to grammar and style, 
than are the English halfpenny papers. 

I have Monsieur Camille Mauclair's kind permission to 
give herewith my translation of one of his admirable short 
stories, which appeared in the columns of "Le Journal" some 
time ago. It is a fine example of French style, and one 
would have to search a long time in the columns of a half- 
penny London paper before finding therein a prose poem of 
this delicate quality : 



LES TROIS CHEMINS. 

(THE THREE ROADS.) 

March ii, 1908. 

In the country of Zaandam, in the Province of Frise, FIol- 
land, it is sweet to live, and the hearts of the inhabitants 
are simple as in the ancient times. 

In the country of Zaandam there are no isolated roads, 



188 



for there are always three which wind along their way to- 
gether. 

The first is the Green road, all glittering with fresh and 
lusty grass, spangled with flowers. This road is bordered 
with the fields of rye and the rich pastures. 

And yet, almost alongside of this road, stretches another 
which is quite black, and covered with velvet-like coal-dust. 
The hoofs of the drag-horses have cut their marks deep 
therein. And, alongside of this black and the other green 
road, there stretches still a third road, which is blue. Over 
this road no feet can pass, and yet it is the most beautiful 
of all, for it is made of a wide ribbon of transparent water, 
wherein lies a perfect reflection of the heavens. If we wish 
to know what is going on in the skies above we need not 
even lift our heads ; it is onlv necessarv to p'aze into the 
water. There one finds mirrored the exact form of the 
smallest cloud, and we can count therein the passing swal- 
lows and the kingfishers. 

And evermore vand thus, and parallel, the three roads — 
black, green, blue — describing fine curves across the soft 
landscapes of Zaandam, and these roads seem to have no 
end. They lead, however, to the sea ! 

At first the sea is invisible, for all the neighbourhood is 
fiat. One can only suspect the presence of the ocean by the 
salt taste which the wind, coming over the waves, leaves 
sometimes on the lips. We know that we are on the out- 
skirts of the province, and we walk so far that there we find 
the sea before us, when we least thought of it. 

On these three roads come and go men and women who 
lead each of them different lives according to the road they 
pass over. Those of the green road are the peasants who 
plough and v/ho lead their cattle to pasture. At night they 
return into the farms and the windmills which are strewn 
all along this green road, and since they are clothed in 
lively-coloured costumes of a strange peculiar cut, they 
have the appearance of very old-fashioned dolls, who are 
going home into their great toy-boxes. The men and women 
of the black highway are black like this road itself, and the 
sweat which pours from their foreheads is mixed with black 
dust. They lead huge and heavy carts which have been 
laden in the mines and the contents of which they are going 
to discharge into the holds of steamers. 

Those people who belong to the blue canal pass slowly 
on their painted barges, leaning on their long poles. At the 
doors — bordered w^ith geraniums — of the little cabins which 
are erected on the false bridge of the long barges, fair, 

189 



plump women give the breast to rosy babes, and one sees 
laughing heads appear in the hatchways. 

Thus go by the people of Zeland, in three classes. The 
fourth we do not know anything of, because the fourth 
class are away on the sea, whence they send home the tish 
for the others. 

Maria Denaalde, at the window of the great mill which 
belonged to her father, watched, passing each on his way, 
and all equally busy, the wayfarers of the three roads. She 
dominated them all, like a little queen, from the height of 
her balcony. Also, all those who passed by, looked up at 
her. For she was pretty and adorned with beautiful rai- 
ment at the same time. With her golden curls and white 
petticoats she carried her name well, for "Denaalde" means, 
in Flemish, "the needle,'' and in truth she was fine and 
slender and shining, with a smile and a glance which pierced. 
The mill stood there by the side of the water, and its huge 
wings made signals to all the country round, as if by these 
gesticulations it would scatter invitations to all to come and 
see something extraordinary. And when one came, one saw 
this little Maria, clad in her jewels, and she made lace, while 
below her the creaking mill made bread. 

By all accounts she was destined to marry one day the 
son of a farmer. Denaalde, her father, wished it, but of this 
Maria as yet knew nothing. She possessed wide meadows 
which were filled with sheep, and when she passed along 
the green road she could walk far without reaching the end 
of the dark walls of her rye-fields. 

All this promised happiness, such as one understands 
happiness in the country of Zaandam, and the youth who 
should marry her was robust and good-tempered, and the 
children would be handsome. Maria found him pleasant to 
look at and was happy to meet him. But whenever they 
parted company she thought no more of him. ^^ 

Now there was a man who always half stopped to look at 
her when he passed down the black road. He led a train of 
waggons laden with mineral ore, great, glittering fragments 
— and he had eyes as brilliant and as dark. He directed his 
drivers, and although he was covered with dust and dirt this 
was a rich man, for the gangs of men and teams of vigorous 
horses all belonged to him. 

Maria followed him with eyes of surprise, and wonder- 
ingly asked herself whether he lived under the earth. And 
the glance of this dark giant had in it something demoniacal, 
yet submissive, which inspired in her heart simultaneously 
fear and affection. 

Then on the blue road there went and came a red boat, 

' 190 



painted with red-lead, with green rigging and a great trian- 
gular sail, which the daylight rendered blinding. On this 
vast sail fell the fretwork shadow of the arms of the mill, 
like pieces of embroidery. And all around the boat the 
glossy waters folded and unfolded themselves, full of azure 
reflections, and the slate-coloured kingfishers sported and 
shrieked. At the rudder stood a young and sunburnt man, 
with golden cheeks, and his breast was white in the hollow 
of his blouse. His locks were curly, his head was small and 
set with an independent air. His mouth was small and a 
little sarcastic. Maria watched him from the moment when 
his boat came into view on the bend of the canal until the 
moment when it disappeared behind the next bend. 

And this young sailor never looked at her. 

Now, one evenin"- the old Denaalde remarked to his 
daughter : 

"You will soon have to get married, my little girl, and 
you wdll wed Dirk, the son of our neighbour, for he has a 
little fortune, is good-looking, and he loves you." 

Maria cried out immediately : 

"I don't want him." 

And she went away in a huff and hid in her room, where 
she wept. Then she reflected that she had answered thus 
without having given suflicient consideration to the matter, 
and she could not guess how it was that this refusal had 
flown spontaneously from her lips with such instinctive 
violence. As her father adored her, he did not torment her 
about it. 

The next day she heard her father speaking with Dirk on 
the wooden gallery which surrounds the mill at its base, and 
whence one can see, through the scuttles, the machinery of 
the mill. At this moment there passed, on the black road, 
the man with the teams, and he stopped to gaze at her so 
ardently that she felt fascinated. Then Dirk went out of 
the enclosure with a downcast look. He saw the other man. 
He saw Maria at the window. And, watching from behind 
her window, Maria understood that between these two men 
immortal hate was born. For the man of the black road 
thought he saw the fiance of the girl whom he desired, and 
the other thought he had discovered the lover of Maria and 
the reason of her refusal to w^ed. 

The day thus passed. Maria was haunted by the eyes of 
the master of the team of waggons. What road should she 
follow w^hen the time came for her to descend from her 
round tower and take part in the life of the country of 
Zaandam ? 

She knew very well that the green road would find no 

IQT 



attraction for her, as she found that road wearisome. She 
would not be a farmer's wife and she would not love the 
honest Dirk. 

The black road frightened her, at the same time that it 
fascinated her. The man who coveted her would lead her 
into the black palaces which are under the earth, then to- 
wards the great iron ships which smoke and bellow down 
there beyond the flat country, in the spacious ports of old 
Holland. And, in the black hands of this giant, she would 
be like a precious little doll made of gold and lace, of flow- 
ery silks and filigree. . . . And perhaps she would go 
very far, far away. Then Maria realised that she was not 
one of those little girls who are very afraid of going far 
away ; but, on the contrary, she was greatly tempted by the 
prospect. And all of a sudden she thought with spite of 
the young sailor in the red boat, who never looked her way. 

He appeared that evening in the twilight. As usual, he 
leant on the long handle of the rudder, and the setting sun, 
red in a sky of periwinkle blue, bathed in colour the great 
sail and the bold and mocking face. Then Maria, watching, 
watching, watching, felt a sudden pressure at her heart. 
For all of a sudden the boatman signed to her, once — twice. 
Unconsciously she inclined her head and sent a kiss to him. 

That night Maria could not sleep. At dawn there was a 
disturbance on the green road — a rumour of stifled, furious 
voices, a quarrel, the sound of dull shocks, a cry, then the 
noise of a gathering of people. Folks exclaimed and raised 
excited cries. The voice of the old miller dominated the 
tumult. . . . 

The door of the enclosure was opened, and Dirk, wound- 
ed, was carried out, whilst the young men of the neigh- 
bourhood led the man of the black road to the village near 
by. Both had been watching under the window of Maria 
and had fought savagely. But the team-driver had drawn 
his knife. 

Now, when father Denaalde made up his mind to summon 
Maria, thinking that she would be touched by the sight of 
the young farmer who had been wounded on her account, 
and that he would put her hand into the hand of the young 
man, he could not find her anywhere. She had made her 
choice and fled away. And, by the time that the sun was 
high in the heavens, Maria de Zaandam was on board the 
red boat which went down towards the sea. She laughed 
in the arms of the sailor who had fixed her choice by a 
single sign, because he had for long pretended to think 
nothing of her. 

Little she cared whether she would be cursed, whether she 



TCV 



would be happy, whether she would be deserted or aban- 
doned, whether she would come back as a beggar, or to die. 
The eternal instinct of her race, in the veins of which ran 
sailors' blood, led her towards Amsterdam, towards the 
north, towards the fog, towards the mists — and whilst one 
bled on the green road and another wept on the black road, 
Maria with her friend went joyously away on the road that 
is always blue. 



LONDON PUBS' AND PARIS CAFES. 

Parslow and I w^ere discussing the relative drunkenness 
of London pubs' and Paris cafes, when we came mutually to 
the conclusion that there were practically no "drunks" (in 
the plural sense) in the cafes of Paris, while it was a singu- 
lar thing that drunks abounded in the London pub', and that 
any Saturday night the dark alleys of Whitechapel might 
be heard ringing wath the raucous cries of beer and rum- 
laden gentry, while respectable people hurrying by mutter 
to themselves, "Hark at Barclay and Perkins !" 

Barclay and Perkins should scarcely be called upon to 
bear all the blame for this drunken uproar, as it is a ques- 
tion of how that firm's wares are presented to the public. 

It generally happens that the glasses are set on the 
counter of a little, noisy, crowded, stand-up bar, from which 
the party of drinkers must hastily retreat, unless they pay 
their way by constantly chucking down their throats a fresh 
glass of something. 

Now exactly the contrary is the rule in a Paris cafe. In 
the summer, and even in the early spring and late autumn, 
the windows of the large and prettily appointed cafe are 
-wide open upon the smiling boulevards ; there is no dark, 
filthy, shamefaced aspect about the interior, where so many 
comfortably installed guests sit sipping their aperetif, or 
their cafe, not dreaming of taking more than one, or at 
most two glasses the whole evening long ; and under no 
sense of compulsion whatever, so far as the management are 
concerned, to drink more than one glass. Many of them, 
indeed, with a little red tapis on the table in front of them, 
are playing cards in parties of four, or writing letters by 
themselves, or absorbed in animated and friendly conver- 
sation. 

They have only to turn their heads towards the wide and 
spacious windows in order to find plenty of amusement in 
watching those who are seated under the coloured awnings 
of the cafe drinking their glass on the "terrasse," while the 



crowd on the broad sidewalk ("trottoir") saunter by beyond. 

Look on this picture and on that. 

I don't suppose anybody knows a pubHc house in Fleet 
Street where the private bar conversation ever rises much 
higher than the " 'ave another?" level; whereas, to take one 
out of a dozen typical cafes in Paris, the yet unpublished 
European news of the day may generally be heard floating 
about in the Cafe Napolitain at the hour of the aperatif. It 
is rather a rendezvous of journalists and men of intelligence 
in the professions than a soaking place for beer-bibbers. 

When I say that Gordon Smith may there be found most 
evenings keeping the "Chasseur" in constant requisition, I 
think the average reader will agree that I have said suffi- 
cient to prove my case. 



FOOD. 

March 14, 19 10. 

There is an idea abroad in England that the French 
cuisine is "epatant" — something wonderful — startling. Well, 
so it is. But the startle is on the wrong side ; for the French 
do not eat so well as we do, and many a meal for which 
they gratefully and contentedly pay would be thrown back 
in the face of the waiter of any good, middle-class English 
restaurant, as an insult and a fraud, while the client who 
was so served would march from the restaurant, le front 
haut, without paying for the inferior food which had been 
placed before him. 

The British workman would certainly not accept the food 
which is daily and hourly eaten and paid for by the French 
bourgeoise class — including bank clerks, shop assistants, 
small rentiers and other middle-class people of independent 
means. The British workman would reject this food — these 
insignificant little square-cut pieces of tough rosbif — as being 
an unmanly solution of the problem of eating. He expects, 
and he gets, a fine cut from the joint — i.e., two or three 
slabs of excellent thin-cut roast beef with fat to it, two 
vegetables, and a half-and-half in a tankard, and this lot 
does not cost him as much as I pay in Chartier's popular 
restaurants in Paris — noisy, crowded, table-clothless, devil- 
may-care, wholesale feeding establishments, where I am 
"served" with an indigestible piece of so-called rosbif, which 
is generally of a greyish colour, and has no vegetables with 
it at all — I don't want to mention five or six little ''pommes 
frites" not worth the name ! 

194 



The "Shilling Ordinary,'' which you can obtain in the 
fine back dining-room of any good-sized pub' in London is, 
in comparison with a French Fr. 1.25 lunch, something so 
generous in quantity and excellent in quality that no French- 
man, even of the upper classes, would believe his eyes if 
he were served in Paris with such a lunch at such a price. 
I can get such a meal in Paris, it is true ; but I must go to 
Fox's in the Rue d'Amsterdam for it, and pay at least four 
francs. 

.During one of my recent flying trips to England I lunched 
on such a "Special Ordinary" in a London pub', and was 
served with a fine ox-tail soup, a large plate of roast beef 
cut in fine slices, with horse-radish and two vegetables 
(enormous, grandfather-like mealy potatoes and cabbage to 
match), and a huge portion of juicy rhubarb tart, with pie- 
crust which was a sight to make sore eyes dance. One 
shilling to pay, and tuppence extra for the tankard. 

The fact is that the average Frenchman does not know 
what good food is. Even if he dines regularly in Duval's he 
is content with the microscopic piece of rosbif or gigot bre- 
tonne about the size of two squares of a chessboard, or a 
little tiny piece of luke-warm fowl — provided he can wash it 
down with plenty of wine. 

The Frenchman seems to take wine more as a food than 
as drink. I suppose he feels instinctively that there is 
"something lacking'' in his diet, so he warms his heart with 
plenty of Bordeaux and considers he has had a good din- 
ner."^ 

Of course, such a Frenchman, if money is of no account, 
may and often does arrive at eating a sufiflcient meal by 
constantly ordering plate after plate of different fish, meats, 
and tiny sweets till he is no longer hungry. It is an ex- 
pensive process, and I prefer to keep the bill down and 
curse the waiter. 

Those beautiful roots, the luscious w^hite artichoke, as we 
know them in England, graciously served upon toast and 
covered with white sauce, are almost, if not quite, unknown 
in France. During five years of French restaurant feeding 
I have not once found them on the carte. No doubt they 
are obtainable at the Cafe d'Anglais, where millionaires like 
Bennett go to drink a glass of water and eat a poached egg, 
leaving twenty francs for the waiter. But I am not speaking 



* I have seen a cradled French baby given white wine to 
drink. It swallowed this just as though it were emptying a 
milk-bottle. Many an English youth of sixteen would have 
walked unsteadil}^ after such a dose. 



of such restaurants. I speak of the bourgeois restaurants, 
where men who hve and work hard in Paris — artists, me- 
caniciens, and stenographers — must go daily to feed. I was 
shocked when, on asking for an artichoke shortly after my 
arrival in France, I received a sort of child's playball — a 
circular collection of olive-green, prickly-pointed leaves 
folded one above the other, with a soft sponge-like heart 
of tasteless fungus in the centre. I saw French people 
tearing these leaves off one by one and sucking them with 
enthusiasm, till they arrived at the spongy heart, which they 
devoured with considerable relish. This they call an arti- 
choke. 

Lemon is never served with pancakes in any popular 
Paris restaurant. You must ask the gargon for the lemon 
separately. Three French ladies at my table watched me 
with great curiosity as I sprinkled my pancake with lemon- 
juice. One even confidentially remarked to her friend that 
this was probably an improvement to Crepes Normandes, 
and that she was going one day to try it herself. 

Haddock, as the Englishman knows it, never arrives on 
the table of a popular restaurant in Paris in recognisable 
form. It shrinks to such infinitesimal proportions that it is 
not worth half the price that is charged for it. To add in- 
sult to injury it is often marked on the menu as pretending 
to be cooked "a. I'Anglaise." The great firm, crisp flakes 
that we know are, alas, not there. The real original had- 
dock^ no doubt, is somewhere in hiding, and could be 
tracked to his lair in the kitchen behind us, but he is so 
transformed in the cooking that his best qualities are con- 
spicuous by their absence. 



One day, perhaps, the French bourgeois may find out how 
we eat in England and at what price. He will then rise up 
in open rebellion against those who cater for him at present 
and will demand value for his money. But perhaps before 
that time the restaurants, like the execrable French matches 
and tobacco, will have become a Government monopoly and 
the poor citizens of the Republic will be powerless. How 
they envy our matches and our tobacco when they do see 
them ! But then England is comparatively free from the 
excess of commercial corruption which obtains at present 
in France. 



196 



TARIFFS. 

April 3, 1910. 

This is perhaps not the place to mention at any length the 
extraordinary tariff system now obtaining in France with 
regard to the importation of English goods — especially to- 
bacco, boots and shoes, and leather bags. 

Under the new tariff, real leather kit-bags (in which I 
take a special interest, having recently bought one in the 
Avenue de TOpera for Frs. 75) pay duty at Frs. 3 per kilo. 

When we come to a tariff* of Frs. 3.00 per pair of leather 
boots with sewn soles, and Frs. 5.00 per pair of leather top- 
boots imported from England into France (with which 
latter country we pretend to be on friendly terms) we rec- 
ognise that the "entente cordiale" is somewhat of an ironic 
term — and that the French are determined to cut their own 
throats. For while we must pay exorbitant prices for ordi- 
nary good English and American boots on the boulevards 
here in Paris, the French must raise the price of their own 
boots enormously under this tariff on leather, as a great 
deal of their raw leather is imported from England and 
other countries. 

With regard to tobacco, the average Frenchman has a 
fixed idea that the taste of the Englishman as concerns this 
weed is not so refined as their own, and that the English- 
man is accustomed to smoke tobacco which more or less 
resembles straw, and that there is no tobacco so fine in the 
world as the rubbish which the Frenchman buys for a few 
sous in the little toy tabacs scattered about the boulevards. 
I can only congratulate the French Government upon the 
facility with which they succeed in foisting this vile tobacco 
upon their citizens ; but no Englishman would insult a re- 
spectable pipe by filling it with this coarse, wiry, hot mix- 
ture, which always makes me feel that I am smoking a pipe 
full of thorns. 

They call this disagreeable tobacco ''Scaferlati Ordi- 
naire," but by any other name it would smell as bad. The 
packet containing 40 grammes costs fivepence. 

It is rather amusing to see that umbrella frames, the 
handles of which happen to be nickelled, coppered, or oxi- 
dised, have to pay duty under the head of ''false jewellery." 
This works out at Frs. 150 per 100 kilogrammes imported. 
In the course of a tariff discussion in the Chamber of Depu- 
ties, Monsieur le Depute Deloncle drew attention to the 
extraordinary classification of umbrella parts and fittings as 
"false jewellery" — but added that "this had no importance 



except to foreigners!' (See British Chamber of Commerce 
"Monthly Circular," No. 134, January, 1910.) 

The duty, on linoleum exported from England into France 
is very heavy, viz., Frs. 25.00 per 100 kilos, which repre- 
sents an average of 30 per cent, of the real value of the 
article itself ! The new proposed rate of Frs. 30 per 100 
kilos would represent 36 per cent, of the value of the ar- 
ticle. The British Chamber of Commerce in Paris drew up 
a special report to point out the iniquity of this heavy pro- 
hibitive tax on linoleum, which, after all, is not such a 
wicked article as, shall we say, opium. It has, indeed, 
cleanly and hygienic properties which should recommend it 
to our friends the French. Indeed, as the British Chamber 
of Commerce somewhat aptly remark at the end of their 
report on this subject, the only countries where the duties 
on linoleum coming from England are absolutely prohib- 
itive, being heavier than those exacted by the French, are 
Roumania, Russia, Austria, and Italy — "countries moreover 
where the habits of the working-classes have never yet 
been cited as models from the point of view of hygiene and 
comfort !" 

VVe can see Italy holding up her pretty hands in horror 
at the bare idea of the importation across her frontiers of 
anything so clean and therefore anti-aesthetic as oil-cloth. 



NEWFIELD'S PHILOSOPHY. 

June 6, 1909. 

Newfield lives in Paris, and is a useful man to know. If 
you have a concession for a new railway and no money to 
build it with, he will find you the funds. 

But not only is Newfield, like many other Germaris, a 
commercial genius. He has gifts of discrimination which 
run in other directions, as the following study will show : 

Leaning his chin on his upraised hands, Newfield ex- 
pounded the following principles in his office. Rue d'Alger : 

In love — how shall I explain it in English — you must hrst 
of all give the girl the idea that you are inevitably right : 
that you can make no mistakes : that you are absolutely 
sure of yourself : that your self-confidence is utterly justi- 
fied. 

Secondly, you must treat the woman always as though 
you knew quite well that she was anxious and desirous to 
break down the maidenly reserve which she pretends should 
exist as a barrier between vou. 



198 



Thirdly, you must never compromise yourself. It must 
be the woman who blushes when you meet — you only smile. 

In a good woman, the beginning of love arises from two 
springs — Pity and Vanity. This Pity, however, is a very 
delicate and dangerous thing. When you first impress her 
with the idea that she ought to have Pity, she should break 
into floods of tears, or the game is lost. 

As to the Vanity, that arises in her by the mere fact that 
she sees you love her, and this vanity may have birth in 
her before you have ever said you love her. She knows you 
admire her. 

These last two points on Pity and Vanity do not apply to 
Cocottes, who are not women. It is unwise to have any- 
thing to do with Cocottes, as the expenses of these latter 
are so enormous that they cannot love for nothing. 

In each woman you search for her weak point and gain 
your way on that. 

Never appear to be in a hurry with her. 

She is like a horse, and must be held by the head and 
controlled. She has less understanding or refinement of 
thought than is generally imagined. 

If you succeed in getting her into a white heat of passion, 
you, take advantage of that moment, and you then drive 
her crazy by the way in which you manage her. 

If a woman after the first surrender to you does not come 
back of her own will the second time, but has to be asked, 
it shows that you do not know your business. 



"JACK." 

A POEM. 

Written in the Cuisine Bourgeoise, to commemorate Miss 
Fox, of ever-glorious memory in the St. Martin's Art 
School. Her pet name in the studios was "Jack." 

"JACK." 

Come back! Come back! Like Thunder on the Stairs 
The feet of those too late are echoing — 
Tantalus stretched in ceaseless agony 
Was not more weary of his unsuccess, 
More constant in his vain endeavour, than I. 

Come back, Eternal Past that lives in Thought 
As Memory ; contrasting with this day — 

199 



So wan, so cold — that men call "That Which Is" — 
So wan, so cold, compared with "That Which Was." 

A hundred steps there were — cold steps of Stone 

That led to Paradise — I trod them all 

With beating heart — with heart that beat the more 

As I ascended, for I knew that She 

Was posing in the old Atelier, 

Smiling 'mid scores of students, with her head 

Bird-like in exquisite pose — a darling head 

Upon a body wholly beautiful — 

Uplifted prouder than the proud swan's head 

Sways o'er the glooming waters — oh heavenly Jack ! 

Come back and pose once more, come back, come back ! 



October 29, 1909. 

What influence is this that comes from so far away, mak- 
ing all the riot of Paris withdraw into its ugly shell and 
leaving, clear as summer skies at evening time, the quiet 
mind filled with sad reflections and the ear with haunting 
melodies like vesper bells? 

Leave me a little alone with this great Sorrow, which has 
power to purify. Even religious sentiment, so outcast, so 
banished and exiled from France, finds herein its part, 
striving mutely with Remorse, as those strive who are 
moved by affection rather than by wrath. 

Jack will be harshly criticised by many and some (espe- 
cially women) will blame her, and others judge her. I can 
do neither, for I only sit here to register a strange fact, 
and record an influence as mysterious as wireless teleg- 
raphy. 

Indeed, it is as though a far-ofif finger touched me, and 
showed me all that was wrong in my life. And in a moment 
all the tinsel glory of the painted boulevards is crumpled up 
and rolled away. 

Other scenes silently supplant those to which I am accus- 
tomed. The panorama of my view of life changes, without 
more noise and as inexplicably as scenes may change in 
dreams, where the landscape unrolls in castles and abysses, 
towers whence clang the wild peals of bells, gulfs and 
gorges where the forked tongues of the ocean foam. 

I question none of these changes (which Jack's influence 
makes upon my life) any more than a man in a dream 
questions the reality of the views he sees. 

200 



Where before I saw no harm, now is a mocking figure 
set, which points with scorn at w^hat I thought was only 
fooHsh. 

And on the heights of danger where I loved to roam, I 
see flapping in the wind the black Flag of Death. 

All this heretic crowd who come rushing and roaring 
down the broad, paper-strewed boulevards are swept away 
out of the province of my thought in a moment. They can- 
not know anything of St. Martin's Art School in London, 
nor can thev count the number of stone steps that led up 
there ; nor understand the feeling of warmth and security 
with which one entered the studios when She posed. Nor 
have these stupid foreigners ever stood, trembling with 
solemn joy, half-way down the stairs listening for the rustle 
of her skirts. 

If they knew her — "Who is it?" they would say, "a 
model — well, like all models, I suppose." 

Ah, it is good, all these miles away, to scent once more 
the sober breath of England and hear the high ideals 
preached above the waters of cesspools and listen to bells 
ringing and chiming from church towers, and voices sing- 
ing in the solemn cloisters. 



EN PLEIN AIR. 

April 1 8, 19 lo. 
It may not be uninteresting to note one or two experi- 
ences of the dulcet and pastoral order, encountered whilst 
painting in the Luxembourg Gardens last autumn. Having 
satisfied a gigantic if somewhat gruff official that I was 
furnished with the necessary official permit to paint emanat- 
ing from the Senate, I was left alone wnth the birds, who 
used to take their bath very leisurely about 8 a.m. in the 
waters that flowed, with the folding evolutions of a prac- 
tised skirt-dancer, from step to step over the Fontaine de 
Medicis. These birds behaved like gentlemen in Govern- 
ment employ, who stroll down to the office at ten o'clock 
in the morning. They were never in a hurry. The musical 
cadence of the falling waters was accompanied by the high- 
pitched obligato of their ablutionary splashings, as, stand- 
ing on tiptoe in two centimetres of flowing water (within 
reach of the hand of the beautiful recumbent statue above 
them) they clapped their tiny wings, sending a silver shower 
of spray flashing up against the shafts of sunlight that 
poured down through the foliage of the elm-trees so early 

201 



in the morning. These fluffy little balls of animated song, 
the common sparrows of the Luxembourg, were certainly 
not much awed by the gigantic figure of Cyclops, who bends 
over the happy lovers below. 

Here, also, once one had fixed one's easel, came the de- 
lightful and enthusiastic French painter, Monsieur Pierson, 
carrying his half-finished canvas in his hand. A retired 
French oflicer, he devotes his whole time to painting, revel- 
ling in the liberty which he at last enjoys after so many 
years of duty. Already his pictures are to be met with in 
the different salons. 

Here we worked together, in the buzzing silence of the 
gardens. The insects hummed and the sparrows twittered 
as we exchanged an occasional remark and squeezed our 
tubes of Vert Emeraude and Laque Geranium on our re- 
spective palettes. 

Our agreeable labours were only occasionally disturbed 
by the advent of the children of the Luxembourg Gardens, 
who, feeling strong within them the elementary instinct of 
criticism, used to whisper to one another with great zest : 

"We shall decide which is the best of the two paintings of 
the Tontaine. Let us criticise !" 

And these serious little self-elected critics probably did 
as well in their way as the "critiques accredites" of the 
halfpenny Press. 

So, amid bees, birds, and flowers there grew upon the 
canvas the great, ancient, ivy-covered wall, the Giant lean- 
ing over the murmuring waters, and the two young lovers 
sheltered beneath the huge rock. 



(Composed near the Fontaine de Medicis. Jardins de 

Luxembourg.) ^^ 

How I love it — falling water, 
With its soft harmonious laughter 
. And the echo following after — 
All the stream was moving slowly, 
In their cups the lilies caught her ; 
And the rushes bowed them lowly, 
How I love it — falling water. 

Doubtless far back in the ages 
My ancestors were brave sailors — 
Fought with storm and followed after 
Roaring waves whose crests were foaming; 
In frail boats for ever roaming — 

202 



How I love it — falling water, 
O'er dry deserts I have sought her. 
All the stream was moving slowly. 
And the rushes bowed them lowly. 



AUDITION CHEZ MASSENET. 

DIARY— JUNE i6, 191 1. 

This is a red-letter day, as we say in England. For to- 
day it was my agreeable duty to take Mrs. X. to the house 
of Monsieur Massenet, le grand compositeur de la Rue de 
Vaugirard. Nous y sommes alle en auto-taxi depuis la Rue 
Riberia, Passy. Com.me c'etait long. Enfin arrive, quelle 
chance ! Le grand maitre etait chez lui. Our rendezvous 
was for half-past two, and the clock was striking the half- 
hour as we mounted his staircase. 

I shall never forget this memorable afternoon. I had no 
idea that the art of music, when one goes to the root of it 
with such an expert artist as he, could contain so much that 
was ferique, ennobling, elevating. 

My conscience smites me even now to think that I, an 
artist in a humble way, could have ever descended from 
these high ideals which he holds ; or searched for pleasure 
otherwise than in the pursuit of art. 

And then again, all that is beautiful and lovely — lov- 
able — is bound up inextricably in that very work which he 
has pursued with such tremendous success during the whole 
of his life-time. The very nature of music is voluptuous. 
He was at once master and lover. 

When he took his seat before the instrument — a large 
piano standing against the wall in a plain, decorous room — 
it was to teach and explain — and listen. Mrs. X. took off 
her hat and began to sing with very graceful movements of 
the hands and body. The whole room soon rang and 
thrilled with the rich tones of her powerful voice. Then 
he would interrupt her with a word of advice. He asked 
her if she could not insert something called, I believe, an 
arret into one passage. She said, "No! I can't do that." 

Then presently, to my astonishment, accompanying him- 
self, he began to sing a passage which she had just finished. 
What a revelation ! The pathos — the meaning, the intention 
poured into each note, without perceptible effort, a pulsa- 
tion of spontaneous and genuine though delicate pathos. As 
a great writer choses just the very word which is proper in 

203 



a certain phrase — the inevitable, the unique, and only word 
which will express his meaning — so he chose the inevitable 
tone which should express and reveal a given emotion. It 
seemed as though the sentiment concealed within the music 
was unfolding itself as naturally as though a flower should 
unfold beneath the heat of a midday sun. "Put," he said, 
"a little more esprit into that passage — some esprit de 
gamin !" 

The author of the opera ''Thais" was endeavoring to 
impart to his enraptured worshipper the spirit of the music. 
She covered him with really pretty broken fragments of 
thanks such as, "O Monsieur Massenet, vous etes un ange!" 

And now it comes back to my memory how he rose and 
sang the pleading tremination to one passage of his opera, 
approaching nearer to her, and bowing with his head over 
her shoulder on the last note. And in an instant he showed 
her the difference between the regular, formal, monotone 
of the mauvaises executrices — and that gush of almost un- 
controllable yet delicately restrained pathos, which made 
a poem at once of what was before almost prose. 

"You have sentiment sometimes," he said to her, "but you 
must have it always !" 

Then he told her that the majority of executants do not 
follow what he has written. Illustrating a certain passage 
with great tenderness, he ceased, and Mrs. X. exclaimed, 
"Oh! like that?" "Mais — c'est ecrit!" replied the master, 
pointing to the annotations on the printed score. "The ac- 
companists change what I have written. It is spoilt and 
made flat and uninteresting!" (just as publishers of litera- 
ture take off the sharp edge of a fine piece of writing — 
which is not to their taste, or which they fear will offend 
those in high places, or rutffle the prejudices of the precious 
public. The true artist knows no fear.) 

"The other day," said the great Massenet, "Madame 
Melba came here to sing over some passages of my music. 
I told her, 'Mais vous chantez ca comme si vous etiez paye 
vingt francs le soir.' She went away, followed by instruc- 
tions, and trained herself on those special points to which 
I had called her attention, putting some proper sentiment 
into her delivery of the words. When she came back and 
sang those passages again I said to her, 'Maintenant vous 
chanetz comme si vous gagniez vingt mille francs par soir !' " 

His handling of the piano was, of course, masterful — the 
piano had no chance when this old man and great musi- 
cian sought to bring the heart out of his music. It be- 
came, as people are fond of saying — merely an instrument 
in his hands. 

204 



At one moment he terminated at great speed a magnificent 
passage which Mrs. X. was singing, in order the better to 
enforce upon her memory and imagination the importance of 
the greatly increased tempo — where the passion of a love 
song was on the point of reaching its tremendous, yet pa- 
thetic climax — he smote with all his force upon the keys, 
accompanying this wonderful energy with a simultaneous 
stamp of the feet which left Mrs. X. far behind. She had 
no chance to sing with a drag. He had brought the passage 
to a glorious and triumphant finish before she had recov- 
ered from the shock of finding that her previous masters had 
entirely misinstructed her as to the intention of Massenet, in 
so far as the writing of the score of this passage was con- 
cerned. Further than that, he adroitly proved to her, by 
practical methods and arguments, that such tempo v/as the 
only possible solution of the passage in question, whose 
spring and vigour resulted from the feeling of desperation 
which hovered behind the words. 



ST. MALO. 

(Published in 'The American Register," Paris, 
Sunday, September i6, 1906.) 

Although the autumn is here, Parisians know of at least 
one seaside place where they can spin out their summer hol- 
idays till the end of September, and this season St. Malo 
on the Cotte d'Emeraude has drawn many happy mortals 
from the tangle of those distractions which belong inevi- 
tably to a great city, and has led them into a wild seaweed- 
strewn wilderness where the sun and the sea are triumphant 
over all. 

Let us follow them. One starts from the Gare Saint- 
Lazare. Here is Versailles. Only a moment's pause and, 
the long train lifting itself upon wings of strength, we are 
purring softly between meadows of luxuriant corn, through 
sun-streaked if miniature forests, and out into the vast plain. 
We reach Le Mans. Then more long, broad, tangled 
hed2:es, skirtins: fields of o-olden corn. Here is Rennes, built 
entirely in stone, a marvellously model city, the houses, tall, 
white, and clean, all looking exactly alike, yet conveying no 
impression of monotony. The great fire of 1720 burnt out 
all the wooden houses but left the cathedral standing. We 
visit this. It is now growing late. The swallows are scream- 
ing round the wide stone-paved market-place. This square 

205_ 



is almost deserted. A heavenly sky presages the swift de- 
cline of day, and the peaceful air of heaven is woven with 
the wild songs of the birds. 

One shudders to think that it was in this godly, righteous, 
and sober-looking town that Dreyfus passed through his 
Gethsemane. 

But it is time to proceed on our journey. We quickly 
reach St. Malo. Once inside the ramparts, one tastes with 
delight that sense of being sheltered in a species of human 
eagle's nest built on a rock overhanging the emerald sea. 
Here are old houses bearing dates such as 1600, difficult to 
decipher, but, when recognised, filling one with a spirit of 
veneration for this venerable city. Here is a gigantic and 
almost Roman-looking wall, plastered with little gables, be- 
neath which peep out latticed windows, half revealing and 
half concealing cool and lofty chambers, which overlook the 
sea. Here one is shut in between the rock-like sides of a 
tortuous street, where neighbours may shake hands across 
the roadway beneath. Here a flash of sea greets the eye 
between two houses, and over the grey ramparts lies the 
everlasting emerald of the ocean, strewn with golden 
islands. 

Soon it becomes dark. Then the little city sleeps, the wide, 
whispering sea making fringes of foam around it, and the 
starlight lies on the foam. 

One looks to hear the cry of the old corsairs, who put out 
to sea to track and destroy the heavily-laden English mer- 
chantmen homeward bound from the East Indies. Eor this 
was a city of right gallant pirates not three hundred years 
ago ; and here we are beneath a monument erected to one of 
them. He stands pointing out to sea, one hand shading his 
weather-beaten forehead. He seems to see beyond the rocks, 
through all the blinding storms of winter, where the precious 
frigate, gold-laden, tosses, an easy prey, on the dangerous 
reefs. 

But here is the Hotel de I'Union, close to the fish-market, 
which will be full of buzzing fun to-morrow morning, and 
where many a brave lobster and many a hairy sea-spider 
comes to his end, amid the sound of bartering. There is 
room in this hotel. All are smiling and afifable. On retir- 
ing, we soon fall asleep. 

We are awakened next morning by the sweet and plain- 
tive note of an unseen bird, which may have been a jackdaw 
upon a wall, and which as though drunk with the sound 
of its voice, repeats again and again its morning call, lazily, 
yet untiringly, in extreme satisfaction, a note that contains 
the quintessence of gratitude and calm joy. 

206 



Listening to this unseen bird which sings on the walls 
below, outside there in the waking: citv, one says to oneself : 
"What folly to rise! How could one destroy this exquisite 
sensation of novelty, this delicate apprehension of the beauty 
of the morning, this anticipation of the joy of unwonted 
scenes, this waking in an old, enchanted city which is a for- 
tress, built alike to defend itself from the sea and from its 
enemies? But the sea is in part its friend. For the sea 
and the rocks make the little city, so daintily defiant, diffi- 
cult of access. This is a city built in heaven and let down 
with ropes to rest upon the common earth to enchant all 
men." 

We do eventually get up and, after coffee and rolls, step 
outside to find ourselves in the midst of the agreeable fuss 
of the fish-market, with the good dames in their ancient 
garb, the picturesque costume of Brittany, the trimmings 
of spotless white lace over their abundant hair, and the 
little black cap set far back on the head, and the clean- 
looking blue petticoat, the same colour and material as the 
workman's blouse. Here is all sorts of bargaining and a 
fine, healthy smell of the sea. We step up on to the ram- 
parts. A flight of little steps leads to the summit. A daz- 
zling prospect lies before us. The sea is of a Mediterranean 
blue. Near by, the island called the "Grand Be" rises like a 
coloured gem from the deep emerald and purples of the 
ocean. As far as the eye can reach the turquoises, the pur- 
ples, and the greens of the calm sea mingle their moving 
colours under a dazzling sun. Here and there other happy 
islands entreat the visitor, with their shelving beach of 
shining sand, to brave the stretch of intervening sea and 
gain their shores. The whole scene flashes upon the trav- 
eller like some glad surprise. "Here," he says, "is w^hat I 
have been looking for — that which I thought could never 
exist." 

We cross to Dinard in the little screw steamer which 
starts from the harbour. It is a beautiful afternoon. As 
we draw away from the great stone wall of the harbour, 
St. Malo, left behind us, runs up into its proper perspective, 
and there it lies, snug in its grey ramparts, a city of the 
elect, a shining tribute to those who erected it more than 
300 years ago. The cathedral spire marks the centre of 
the town, and around this white and graceful point rises a 
regiment of picturesque roofs, tinged a faint grey purple 
colour with a touch of red here and there. Below this ex- 
quisite crown of colour the old houses stand out in dazzling 
zling white, with purple shadows and brilliant sunshine 
alternately touching the picture. 

207 



Every day these rapid little screw-steamers, which ply 
from the harbour wall across the stretch of dazzling tur- 
quoise-blue waters which separate Dinard from St. Malo, 
are crowded with gay passengers, dressed in flannels and 
Panama hats. When the tide is out, these little boats — no 
bigger than an ordinary fisherman's sailing boat — cannot get 
into the harbour at St. Malo, and they steam down to a 
rocky point under the shelter of that island called the 
''Grand Be," to the top of which people climb to look at the 
tomb of the great French poet, Chateaubriand. 

Is there any sea-trip more delightful early in the morning, 
or "in the all-golden afternoon" (as Tennyson has it), than 
this crossing from St. Malo to Dinard? First the long 
walk at low tide along the stone path cut in the rocks — a 
path fringed with exquisite embroidery of golden sea-weed, 
which is so softly lifted and swayed by the caress of the 
incoming tide. Then, the distant panorama of ocean, with 
all its emerald colours, its greens, purples, and vivid, spark- 
ling blues. One goes on board the little boat, which steams 
noiselessly away. One sees all the rocks under the clear 
salt water ; passes swimmers luxuriating in the cool depths. 
Now St. Malo grows smaller in the distance. It is gath- 
ered up within its wall, and there sits this marvellous an- 
cient City of the Sea, on the heights which its builders and 
Nature herself created for it. One lands at Dinard in a 
little harbourage which is a daily marvel of gorgeous col- 
ours — blue jackets and jerseys of fishermen; brown, yellow, 
golden sails of fishing boats. Rocks and seaweed lit by 
the long slanting rays of an afternoon sun, and on the sea 
all the dimples of the flying wind, and the shadows of the 
flying clouds ; or, on a calm day, under the sea all the 
shadows of the pebbles and the rocks. 

r/ 
• • • • • • > 

As we near this harbourage one looks back across the 
blue intervening waters at a city which resembles some 
fantastic palace built by the hands of fairies. Landing at 
Dinard, we turn sharp to the right, and climb a path which 
leads by the cliff to a piece of garden overhanging the sea. 
We have been struck whilst yet on the boat by a spot of 
brilliant colour on the cliff. And now we find it is a garden 
high up on the cliff and sloping to the edge of a precipice. 
Here a flash of scarlet geraniums, thickly bordered with 
what the gardener tells us is a new species of purple violet 
— the flower-beds surrounded with grass of a surprisingly 
fresh and beautiful green — flings so brilliant a contrast of 
colour against the turquoise of the sea, which again seems 
to challenge the virgin whiteness of the walls of St. Malo 

20S 



in the distance, that one feels rooted to the spot with ad- 
miration. 

A large flagstaff was erected in the brilliant-flowered gar- 
den, and against the blue of a cloudless sky there flutters 
out lazily a long flag divided into two halves of colour, one 
bright yellow, the other dark blue. 



But Dinard is not to be compared with St. Malo from 
the point of view of the picturesque or the historically 
beautiful. 

Let us, before we leave St. Malo, visit the tomb of the 
poet Chateaubriand. At low tide there is a pathway be- 
tween the rocks and we can climb up on to yonder green 
island, and there, high above the sea and facing out to the 
wide main, we come upon a granite slab, on which stands a 
granite cross, surrounded by railings between which the 
butterflies, passing idly on their way across the hill, flutter 
carelessly. 

Not a word of inscription. But all France knows who lies 
there. There is something barbaric, and that smacks of 
defiance, in the absence of orthodox inscription. One feels 
that the great poet has done with speech and that he has 
chosen this spot, detached at high tide from the mainland, 
to commune alone with the sea he loved, and that in the 
wordless rush of brine-laden breezes he finds more music 
than in stanzas of poetry graven upon the granite slab. 

Those w^ho can read the poet's last wish aright know 
that he deemed all inscription to himself unnecessary, and 
that the cross which stands there on the rocks overlooking 
the emerald sea is set up as a memorial of the poet's love of 
nature. 



THE CHILDREN OF ST. MALO. 

When I speak of the children of St. Malo I do not neces- 
sarily mean the children of the rich residents or of the rich 
visitors, who walk with their best dresses on the firm part 
of the sand and are not allowed to climb the rocks ; whose 
faces are proud and glum and who may not dance wildly at 
twilight on the great sandy carpet under the ramparts, nor 
roll in the sand with frantic cries of glee. 

I mean the children of the poor people who work and 
live at St. Malo, and whose parents earn their bread by 
fishing or working in the town. 



These children come out of school at four in the after- 
noon. I know the hour well, for the pattering of their teet 
on the road that leads under the porte des Champs-Vauvert 
and down the rugged pathway over the rocks, has become 
an accustomed sound to me. 

There is Raoul Pauvre, cheeky, sturdy, little four-year- 
old, with a great head and firm legs and a blue frock. How 
soon the tears come in his blue eyes, where a moment ago 
he defied the whole world of English, French, and Dutch- 
men to abash him ! Ah, Raoul ! — was it not horribly sad 
sitting still to have your portrait painted? — with the great 
head which would roll from side to side, because it was so 
heavy. 

And you ! Marie — frail and delicate flower of the sea ! 
Why do you run hatless on the rocks? Your bare legs and 
feet are yellow as the sand they tread — your eyes are light 
like the light one finds in clear pools at low tide. Your 
voice is tender and haunting and modest and true. 

Your sister Marcel is much stronger than you and does 
not cough. She runs wild and climbs a dangerous wall, 
where if she slipped she would be dashed to pieces. 

But below on the sands in the setting of the sun a little 
girl with black hair and ruddy cheeks is dancing, dancmg 
and shouting with joy — all alone — all alone. She looks up 
though, now and again, to those in the sort of gallery 
overhead, which is really a stone balustrade under the ram- 
parts, where a few others and myself are leaning over and 
watching her. 

She is, according to her own declaration, ''une petite 
anglaise." "Je suis une petite anglaise" are her first words 
to a stranger. 

Her mother, a woman of easy morals, came from Guern- 
sey, and went back, leaving the child deserted at St. Malo. 
A St. Malo man, who might be called a poor man were it 
not that he had three boys and a good wife, took and 
adopted the little English girl, who was two years old and 
was hungry and knew no one. And now two years have 
passed and they will not give her up, and she does not want 
to go to her mother. She calls the new people her mother 
and her father and her brothers. And she dances round and 
round on the sand down there when the tide is low at sun- 
set, and she twirls round three times and falls, laughing, in 
the sands. And she runs forward and falls again. *'Je 
suis une petite anglaise," but she wants to live always here, 
where the firm sands are, and where twice a day the rippling 
water comes whispering round the "Grand Be," under the 
Tomb of Chateaubriand, bringing with it the colours of 



precious pearls and jewels, and covering softly the stone 
path that connects at low tide the "Grand Be'' with the 
mainland. 



ST. LUNAIRE. 

(Not far from St. Malo.) 

I do not know what there is in a church, but if one has 
once been brought up in a country rectory with one's 
brothers and sisters, there is something at once sweet and 
sorrowful in an old, old church found crumbling to death in 
the country, with the bright sunlight pouring into it. 

One stands here and thinks of one's mother. 

The old stone crucifix in the little yard of the church at 
St. Lunaire is all crumbling away. And inside the ancient 
church one shows you (and she is only a little girl with a 
church key almost as big as herself) *ie vrai tombeau de St. 
Briac." 

The sunlight cannot find its way on to this stone coffin 
with the figure of St. Briac lying on the top of it, in the 
dark and the solemn dust. 

Hark at those bells. They might be ringing still in the 
Rcv tory Church at home — in that other quiet village which 
is now only a dead memory laid to rest for ever, under a 
huge yew tree full of live green leafage and powerful purple 
shadows on the trunk and the vast branching arms. 

Ding-dong. Let me stand here for a moment against 
this altar, little girl. You cannot tell why I delay and look 
at what the others do not trouble about. Yes, the roof is 
all crumbling for a fall. But the old altar is still bright 
with gold and trim with its geometric lines. All my home 
is brought back to me, and my anxious but somewhat tran- 
quil childhood stands before me in this summer light under 
the shadows of the nave. 



MONT ST. MICHEL 

and 

THE COTE D'EMERAUDE. 

August, 1907. 

Here at last is a little mystery, solitude and silence. A 

little whispering and running of waters across forty miles of 

sands, in the twilight, after the long, noisy day. What a 

message of tranquillity and melancholy ! — something speak- 

OTT 



ing from afar off — the words forwarded from a distant 
horizon of sea — and handed on and on over ridges of flat 
sand, over quicksands where only the seagull can pass with 
safety, from far out where deep waters lie. 

Quick — gather up your paints and your sketch-book. All 
unperceived, the narrow channels of water have grown into 
lakes, have widened into unfordable canals. And still the 
water runs on, whispering, pushed by an unseen force of 
distant tides, the hidden impulse of unfathomable deeps, 
pressing those slender messengers of the tide across the. 
barren wastes of bare and dangerous sand. No music de- 
scends from the tall, prickly towers of the cathedral. The 
voice of history is silent, hiding her thousand secrets. We 
know the monks of Benedictine lived well here, drank good 
wine in the hall of sixty windows, roasted whole oxen in 
the magnificent kitchen. That the prisoners groaned in 
their dungeons, when the mountain was cut off from the 
mainland by the incoming sea. 

I hear the voices of Americans around me. And one, a 
beautiful American girl, leans her proud, queenlike head on 
her hand. Her elbow is round and shapely. She reminds 
me of some proud sailor girl who goes through life steer- 
ing her ship straight and true and looking out at wide hori- 
zons, full of a dauntless will — a scornful courage. She fig- 
ures well up here on the mountain. She is not abashed by 
this magnificent scenery. She moves and speaks as if it all 
belonged to her. 

Neither is she one of those Americans who are always in 
a hurry. We remember one party who, immediately upon 
arriving in the morning, inquired the afternoon trains for 
St. Malo, and then contented themselves with photograph- 
ing one another in their spic and span costumes, in the nar- 
row street. It is an insult to Mont St. Michel and a piteous 
waste of travelling expenses to hurry away thus after a 
casual glance at the surroundings. One misses thus all the 
enchantment of glorious sunsets on the wet sands, of effects 
of flying clouds on the vast table-land at low tide, and all 
the mystery of twilight, with an incoming tide, and night 
with its moonlight splendour. 

One cannot help being somewhat amused at the conduct 
of the dear old white-capped ladies who serve as guides up 
the rocky paths. They describe things historical and pic- 
turesque to you in admirable slow and distinct French, but 
just when you begin to get really interested, and to arrive 
at such a height as gives you the full panorama of Brittany 
and Normandy coasts below, they announce to you with a 
smile that that is as far as they go, and leave you outside 

^12 



the first grey barrier walls of the abbey itself. So your tips 
are split up into several fragments, or multiplied, if you are 
generous, by the time you have seen everything that there 
is to be seen. 

The much-advertised museum is certainly worth a visit. 
It gives w^ax-work representations of the prisoners who 
were confined long ago in the dungeons of the mount, and 
contains also a fine picture-gallery, including water-colours, 
oil paintings, medals, old swords and bullets found in the 
surrounding sands and on the rock itself, and other inter- 
esting antiquities. 

The Mont St. Michel is unique, because there is a certain 
sense of insecurity always surrounding you. The voice of 
the incoming tide has something soft, awful and mysterious 
in its accents, for it has swallowed many unhappy victims, 
some of whom saw the water run across the flat sands for 
miles; and reach them while they were held in the deadly 
grip of the quicksands. 

People nowadays walk out and see the quicksands — those 
which are the less dangerous spots. You stamp on them, 
and all the sand quivers like a jelly. There is no founda- 
tion underneath this sand. Your boot goes under, and you 
have to pull very hard to get it out. Imagine that you are 
all alone. That you have sunk in up to your shoulders. The 
only sound heard is that of a seagull, which swings scream- 
ing above you. Then you hear the sudden quick whispering 
of the tide. A blue carpet with a white hem is being un- 
rolled faster than a man can run, over forty miles of golden 
sands. It reaches you. You are lost. 

Up on the rocks the great cathedral throws a purple sil- 
houette of spire and turrets down on the sand below. A 
beautiful picture for us who are safe on the ramparts. We 
can almost fancy we hear the chanting of the Benedictine 
monks in the vast nave of their rock-bound abbey. 

It is now dinner-time. We climb a rugged staircase in 
the rocks and enter a great dining-hall. This is the Hotel 
Poulard Aine, and a hundred guests sit down almost every 
night. Through the great window at one end of the room 
one sees a steep wall of rocks — the real rock of Mont St.' 
Michel — ascending almost perpendicularly. One thinks of 
the dungeons that lie hidden inside this rock, in the dark 
subterranean passages of the abbey, in which one can even 
now easily lose oneself. 

Here Barbes starved and was eaten of rats in his iron 
cage. 

Now the mountain is harmless, but it remains the most 
majestic historical monument in France. There is prac- 

213 



tically but one hotel — the Hotel Poulard. But there are 
various little annexes of this hotel, and everybody goes to 
the Hotel Poulard Aine to taste Mrs. Poulard's celebrated 
omelette. You can see her cooking it over the huge open 
chimney of the old-fashioned fireplace. Here the chickens 
are all turning on their spit, just before seven o'clock, the 
dinner hour. It is all, all very delightful and old-fashioned. 
But the most beautiful sight is the incoming tide, racing in 
long level lines across the intervening sands. It covers 
great spaces by degrees. Acres and acres of ground dis- 
appear. But there still remain great, gleaming spaces of 
yellow sand. At last all is water. 

And away out on the sands at low tide. How far can 
you go ? As far as the Rock of Tombelaine. But take care. 
You walk for three miles first on level sands. Where the 
receding tide has left ridges, there the sand is good and 
firm. But where there are no lines or ridges, and the sand 
looks like sheets of molten lead, there you may sink. 

Just before you reach the rock of Tombelaine you come 
upon a sheet of water. It is a little river which is flowmg 
to the sea across the sand. You can wade through it easily. 
The sand is rather soft. There are quicksands the other 
side between the river and the rock. You can cross them 
with average safety. On your return you may meet, grouped 
round one of the lorn, lone boats that lie on the great, silent 
shore, a strange people, the fishermen and boys of the 
Mount. 

They have come out there to dig for shellfish, which are 
abundant. Their figures look absurdly tiny out on the great 
waste of the vast, wind-swept sands. Their legs are bare 
and brown. They wear caps and blue linen knickerbockers 
and short black coats. In their eyes is the hard, blue light 
of the sea. They walk in stooping attitudes, as though they 
were still dragging at the nets. ^ 

When they come back to the Mount, after a day or a 
night of absence, their eyes look strange, like the eyes of 
men who have gone deep into Nature's secret, and into 
whose hearts has penetrated something of the wildness and 
the loneliness of Nature herself. 

But at seven o'clock in the evening you can see them in 
their tiny cottages high up on the mountain. They are 
smoking their pipes and talking nice, comprehensible 
French, which shows that after all they are perfectly human 
when the great desolation of the w^ind-swept waters and 
the dangerous sands is not upon them. 

A building, parts of which date back to 800 years ago, 
and which has been the scene of some of the most bloody 

214 



conflicts in history (for the English again and again tried 
to obtain possession of the Mount), must needs possess a 
magic and a mystery which make themselves felt always 
and which impress every traveller. 

Thus it is that a journey to Mont St. Michel has become 
a sort of pilgrimage for those who have travelled far and 
wide, who have withstood the world's bufifetings and have 
become blase to the majority of sight-seeing. 

Here in this great loneliness they find the sympathetic 
voice of Nature calling to them over the wastes. Here is 
every imaginable consolation — the sea, the rocks, the wild, 
restless gulls with their mournful cries, the little gardens 
thick with climbing flowers, the old chapels with their col- 
oured windows, in which no sound is heard except the buzz- 
ing of July bees, who have found their way in through the 
open windows. And here on Sunday, in these three little 
rows of front benches, sit the school children of the moun- 
tain, guided thither by the old sister, in her wide white hood 
and black cloak, with a gold cross on her breast. She has 
guided a generation of children up to this rock-built chapel 
above the seas. 



When you have finished your cafe cognac before the blaz- 
ing log fire on the ground floor of the Hotel Poulard, the 
gargon of the hotel gives you a Chinese lantern with a 
little candle-light glowing inside, and you ascend the rocky 
staircase in the open air to your bedroom on the heights 
above. "Rein de plus charmant" than the effect of these 
little lanterns going up in the darkness. 

Perhaps also you will be tempted to take a stroll round 
the ramparts and up to the abbey in the dark — or maybe in 
the moonlight. There you will see, towering far above you, 
the huge, jagged outline of the cathedral. The summit of 
this mighty edifice seems to touch the black skies. There are 
all sorts of little staircases by which you can climb down 
again. You come upon gardens with locked grilles, inside 
which shine in the moonlight tall and graceful crucifixes. 
Below you the lights in a few cottage windows gleam like 
jewels in the darkness. 

All around this Mount the waters and the sands stretch, 
indescribably triste in their great solitude and silence. 

Visitors from New York, London, or Paris feel this 
weighty silence. Here there is no trafiic, no tramways, no 
newsboys shouting the evening paper. Everybody goes to 
bed at ten o'clock ! 

If you lose your hat on these sands, you may run for 

21- 



seven miles after it and then not get it. I lost some papers 
from my sketch book and I saw them running away as far 
as the eye could reach. They never halted in their course 
for a moment, for the sands were flat as a billiard-table, and 
the wind blew steady from the East. 

Chasing your hat in the street is dull sport compared to 
chasing it over quicksands. 

The best advice that the native fishermen can give you if 
you find yourself all of a sudden up to your waist in moist 
sand, and no firm ground then under your feet, is to lie on 
your back and then try and roll over and over till you suc- 
ceed in rolling to the left or to the right, and reach firm 
ground. 'Tl ne faut pas piquer debout !" said this weather- 
beaten Muriel, who has lost one arm. "Piquer debout" 
means to stand upright like a spear, which naturally results 
in your speedily boring a hole with your own feet, which 
ultimately becomes your grave. 

Muriel of the one arm and the iron hook for his second 
hand, risks his life each day on the windy sands to gather 
a basketful of "coques" — a common shellfish found near 
the surface of the sand, which is good eating, and finds a 
ready sale. 

A journey to Tombelaine, the rocky island that stands in 
the sea, three miles away from Mont St. Michel, is worth 
the trouble, for those who love a fine pile of sea-girt or 
sand-girt rocks of brilliant yellows and greys, and peopled 
only by a few birds. 

Here till recently near the summit one found a spring of 
fresh water. It is now choked with stones. A few ruined 
ramparts still exist — an old window in a crumbling battle- 
ment, and the remains of a cottage which was inhabited not 
long ago by a man and his family — you can see the ruins of 
a kitchen-garden. 

A wild waste of sand and water surrounds the island. 
The landing is dangerous, as the strong currents of the in- 
coming and outgoing tides rush round the rocks at the foot 
of the island and hollow great pits under the treacherous 
sands. 

Here you may sink in one instant up to your shoulders, 
on a spot which but yesterday was marked by the fishermen 
themselves as safe — for the moving sands change from day 
to day, and to-morrow the treacherous ground may, by a 
trick of the tide, become firm sand again. 



216 



SHADOWS. 



Before we leave St. Malo I am tempted to relate the 
actual experience of an artist friend of mine who, havmg 
passed some weeks in that beautiful spot, was so enraptured 
with the poetic charm of the place that he lost all track of 
the practical side of the question, and postponed his depart- 
ure until his hotel bill reached a figure which was, to him, 
so colossal that he was obliged to have recourse to strategy 
in order to escape with his paintings from the hotel. I 
shall now proceed to tell the story in his own words : — 

July 27, 1907. 

"I excuse myself for being misled one moment into the 
kingdom of literature by an event at once dramatic and sor- 
did, which happened at half-past eleven at night in a nar- 
row street in St. Malo, where you can almost touch the 
wall opposite. Bad characters march and shuffle below in 
the narrow passage, thieves examine stolen purses, and cats, 
such as Tennyson would have loved to describe in poignant 
poetry, slink by on padded paw, or scream like devils when 
the moon is full. 

"I was looking down on this passage in the ancient, his- 
torical town one night, when the clock struck eleven, but I 
thought it was too early yet to do what I wanted to do. 

"My bag — a mere ten-franc valise purchased in the Ave- 
nue de I'Opera — was packed to bursting ; impossible to 
fasten the lock, but the straps held firm and a long coil of 
rope w^as fastened to the leather handles. 

"I lifted the heavy bag on to the stone ledge outside my 
w^indow. Then I heard whispers : 

*' Tci ! Ici ! Mais oui — C'est lui ! Regarde !' 

"Evidently the servants in the kitchen below, who be- 
longed to this Hotel de I'Union, could see what I was doing, 
and that I was about to descend my bag by a strap from 
the window, after running up a bill of 150 fr. which I could 
not pay. 

''I then perceived on the wooden shutters of the house 
opposite ours, in the narrow passage, certain reflections, 
which moved as though a candle were being passed rapidly 
from side to side. But these reflections appeared outlined 
on solid wooden shutters opposite and the sound of the 
footsteps which accompanied the mysterious movements of 
the shadows came from the ground floor. 

■'How to reconcile the situation? Shadows on the level of 
the first floor and footsteps crunching a stone pavement, 

217 



such as the cobbles of the kitchen on the ground floor? The 
fact was, there was a hght in my room and the servants in 
the kitchen directly underneath me had perceived all that I 
was doing, outlined in a shadow picture on the wooden 
shutters which faced my window. 

"That was how I never actually descended my bag at 
night-time into the narrow passage near the fish-market of 
the Place Poissonniere, St. Malo, where on Friday and Tues- 
day mornings rang so gaily the echoing footsteps of the 
wooden-shoed fisherwomen. 

"I sauntered out early the following morning, before 
many servants were awake, from Hotel de I'Union. I had 
a coffee somewhere and went down under the great por- 
tico, or archway, that gives on the noble sea. 

"Oh, how quiet it was there, that early, early morning, 
after all the fuss and worry of debts that created turmoil in 
my mind ! 

"There was the great sea, the same as usual, but not the 
same. A vast mist overhung rocks, pools, and the far- 
spreading tide. The island of the Grand Be was gradually 
growing visible, throwing off minute by minute its silky 
veils of cloud. I went right out on the rocks and sat down 
on a furthermost point. 

"There I heard presently a cornet, which sounded in the 
military barracks over the ramparts of the ancient city. 
There were answering movements to this and then a long- 
drawn music, such as hunters might make coming from a 
forest. It was the dawn of the life of a new day in this 
beautiful, fortified city, which I was obliged to leave. Why 
was I going back to Paris ? 

"All was so calm and beautiful here. I could not tear 
myself away. As yet none of the world were up and about. 
I had, truth to tell, no lucrative occupation to go back to in 
Paris. I had other troubles about a girl. I could slip away 
from life here, near the Tomb of Chateaubriand, where the 
seagulls make those witching, but melancholy, cries. 

"But no. ... It was beautiful — it was the dawn of 
a day. I went up the rocks and re-entered the ancient city 
by way of the great, grave, stone doorway, and as it was 
not yet time to go to the post-office to ask if there was a 
registered letter for me, I turned in at the great cathedral 
doors, which were open. Magnificent and happy silence ! 



"It was just after coming out of the cathedral and enter- 
ing the post-office to ask for my letter — about 8.30 a.m. — 

218 



that a police officer told me he wanted me to come with him. 

"My wire to Pai'is from the police office read : 'Arrested 
by police. Please send 150 fr.' I waited, shut up in the 
police-office, with five or six gendarmes with swords round 
me, from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m., when in reply to my telegram 
came a mandat telegraphique for 50 fr., which, by authority 
of the Procurator, was seized in its entirety by the hotel 
proprietor, he giving me as a favour 3 fr. (three francs) to 
get back to Paris with. 

"I was happily in possession of a billet de faveur, or first- 
class railway ticket, which the newspaper for which I write 
had procured for me from the Chemin de Fer de I'Ouest. 

"Ill-bred sergeant in the police-office (see sketch) said 
that 'the only carriage I should ride in would be the prison 
van,' and that I should eat the prison bread, and that 'wiien 
he had the time' would be the time when I should see a 
magistrate to make my complaints. At first he refused abso- 
lutely to allow me to send a telegram to the Paris office, and 
said that he did not at all think they would ever send me 
any money and that he could do nothing to assist me unless 
he was ordered to do so. 

Roberts, of the Hotel de I'Union, certainly sent me up a 
good lunch in a basket, where I ate and drank amongst the 
police officers. He was not going to starve the bird thai 
might possibly lay the golden tgg. 

"'C'est plutot des mensonges; said the tall gendarme, 
when I told the exact truth of the story to the Procurator. 
The Procurator ordered that all my luggage should be con- 
veyed back from the railway station to the hotel and that all 
the money which came from Paris should be handed direct 
to Roberts. 

"I was arrested without a warrant of anv sort or any 
written paper being shown me. 

"When I threatened the police-sergeant that I would go 
out, as these were illegal proceedings, he pushed me vio- 
lently into a chair in the corner of the police-office and 
threatened me with dry bread and the police van. 

"But the most amusing thing is, that when I got back to 
Paris and some time after I had joined the staff of the 'New 
York Herald' at (to me) a princely salary, my pictures sold 
very well, and I sent down sixty francs to j^.Ionsieur Roberts, 
which he gladly took in payment of the balance of my bill 
and sent me by return of post my much-loved water-colour 
of the market-place, which he had been holding as security 
for the debt, but which now hangs in my room. 

"What a fuss over nothing ! 



219 



*'In America they say one is not a citizen until one has 
been arrested. Following this line of argument, I seem to 
be a citizen of St. Malo. And perhaps this is the reason 
why I revisit the dear old town whenever I have an oppor- 
tunity, always stopping, by preference, at the Hotel de 
rUnion, where Monsieur Roberts and I have long since 
made up our little differences." 



MADEMOISELLE DUVAL. 

August, 1908. 

If there is treasure hidden who shall know 
Whether to find it hidden high or low ? 

Some thread that reels from sources yet unknown 
Runs through our lives and spells some mystic sign, 
But dimly writ, like texts on ancient stone. 

They say that those who run may read, but I 

Find that Life's riddles are not solved betwixt 

The rising and the setting of a Sun ; 

And sometimes have I lost for having run — 

Then walking at a snail's pace I would try, 

But ever was the golden hour wrecked 

And evermore the Prize by Fate was fixed 

A little further than the mountains lie. 

Thus roseate illusion, coy to yield 

Her charms mysterious to mortal man 

From those escaped who walked, like those who ran. 

If then 'tis true that she I loved and lost ^ 

Basks in Italian valleys with her babe. 

Better it v/ere, like Enoch Arden, I 

Should moulder here, pent in the town and die — 

Or visit her like one unknown, who comes 

'Mid vagrancies and wanderings to light 

By chance in her sweet village. There a lake 

With mirrored mountain tempts his hand to paint 

Its splendour on a canvas. So he wends 

His way into the village at nightfall 

Sleeps, wondering how to meet her, and next day 
Makes portraits in the village here and there, 
And comes at last to light upon her house. 
As if by chance ; but knowing all the while 

220 



That he will hear her talk and see her smile 
Who was his dainty mistress for a day 

(Never the first glad meeting he forgot 
By old St. Malo's rock-strewn beach — July 
Set all the salt pools sparkling with delight.) 

Now on his canvas grows her shapely head 
While her white arms the little one enfold. 
Her husband says : "Ah, this will cost me dear," 
And asks him how he fared along the road 
And whence he comes and whither he is bound. 

At last, the portrait finished, he heavily dwelt 
On her loved features and drunk deep her thoughts 
Says to those gathered: "Friends, I thank you all. 
My work is ended. There is nought to pay. 
Guard it and think sometimes of me and say : 
'God bless the wanderer on his lonelv wav.' " 



THE CHANNEL TUNNEL. 

October 31, 191 1. 

It is scandalous that a civilised nation should obstruct 
the construction of a Channel Tunnel. 

It has been long ago suggested by the French that such 
a tunnel could come up on the English side on an artificially- 
constructed island, linked with the mainland by a bridge 
which could be destroyed by a single shell fired from a 
British man-o'-war. As this suggestion was wTitten in 
French, it probably escaped the attention of Great Britain. 

The other day I was crossing to France, after one of my 
flying trips to England, and the boat tossed for three-quar- 
ters of an hour outside Boulogne Harbour, unable to enter, 
the signals being against us. The scene was epic. At the 
mercy of the winds and waves the poor little steamboat 
tossed up and down, luggage rolled from side to side, beau- 
tiful women groaned in costly cabins (where every factor 
of comfort except equilibrium was in evidence), the wind 
whistled drearily through the spars and rigging, and those 
who wished to remain on deck for the sake of the fresh air 
were soaked with spray. W^e were two and a half hours 
crossing the Channel. We are one hundred years behind 
the times. 



OOT 



When are we to have direct railway communication be- 
tv/een London and Paris? 



FLYING TRIPS TO ENGLAND. 



"YE HYPOCRITES !" 

August 12, 191 1. 

I am so amused, when I come on one of my flying trips 
to England, to hear wdiat opinion the English girl has of 
the French girl. "Oh," said Miss Maud Green, an actress 
whom I ran up against in Coventry, after I had told her 
quite spontaneously and without any malice that the majority 
of French girls were undoubtedly prettier and more taste- 
fully dressed than the English : 

"Ah," she said, "but the worst of it is they make them- 
selves so cheap !" 

This actress then drank up three whiskies and sodas, 
pressing her very ugly and bad-mannered friend to drink 
at my expense also, and forthwith invited herself and her 
friend at my expense to the theatre for the evening. 

They make themselves so expensive and they condemn 
their prettier French sisters for "making themselves so 
cheap !" 



In France every young girl is gay — her birthright is a 
splendid one — she knows that the French woman is re- 
garded by every quarter of the world as the ideal type of 
female beauty She is proud of that heritage and lives up 
to it. She dresses up to her part. She walks like a Ptin- 
cess, and sometimes more gracefully than a Princess.^ 

I do not think there is any dispute about these facts. It 
has been said again and again by those who are men and 
women of the world and have travelled, that even the Pa- 
risian cocotte is a brighter, more beautiful, and more be- 
witching companion than the cocotte of any other nation. 

I scarcely like to compare her with the English demi- 
mondaine. Alas, it is not the latter's fault that she is forced 
to adorn herself only with ugly attributes, in place of her 
French sister's natural gaiety and delightful tastefulness. 

It is not the Englishwoman's fault. Far from it. It is 
the fault of that prudish section of English "society" (very 
often a middle-class section rather than a high-class), whose 
cold reserve and bitter scorn for everything which is not 

222 



''Marriage'' makes the poor little cocotte feel that she is 
indeed as much a pest as the vermin which we destroy in 
our kitchens. 

]\Iany people are in the position of not being able to mar- 
ry — perhaps they were not rich enough to marry the lady 
of their choice ; perhaps they are devoted to some absorbing 
line of study and they find that the expense of a regular 
menage makes deep inroads into their small private fortune 
or tiny hand-to-mouth income. 

The laws of men are very often unfortunate, and in Eng- 
land we are face to face with the law of Marriage, and in 
the British mind there is absolutely nothing between that 
and the streets. 

All honest flirtations, all serious intrigues between two 
young people of the opposite sexes who love each other 
without asking anybody's permission, are fiercely frowned 
down by anxious parents — parents who are not anxious for 
their children's welfare in the least ; but are anxious for what 
and world will say — and who dread lest their previous little 
daughter (a valuable asset in the family fortunes) should 
either "create a scandal" or "marry beneath her." 

In other words, having riotously amused themselves by 
bringing five or six children into the world, the parents 
think they have obtained right of possession over them just 
as goods and chattels, and have acquired the monopoly to 
sell them to this or that man or woman as husband or wife. 

They are horrified at the idea that love could exist un- 
trammelled by their interference and without being trained 
up some conventional pea-stick which they have planted in 
the narrow back-g^arden of their mind. 



b' 



After five years' sojourn in Paris, during which I often 
led a happy and interesting life, I returned for a space to 
England. One afternoon I was released from a rush of 
work, and, walking through a country town in Warwick- 
shire, I saw an English girl of certainly not extraordinary 
attractions — but not so decidedly plain as some — and, by way 
of a test, I invited her to come to tea in the pastry-cook's. 

A similar request in Paris would always have been re- 
ceived by such a gracious smile and, if the lady was married, 
a few pleasant words explaining that it was impossible ; I 
should then have lifted my hat and withdrawn, carrying with 
me only a pleasant reminiscence of a beautiful woman ; for a 
French woman of any attractions considers it perfectly nat- 
ural that she should be admired and never regards her ad- 
mirer in the light of a criminal ! This is strange, but it is a 



fact — and a very hard fact for a plain, stoney-faced British 
woman to swallow ! 

Note the difference in the incident I am describing. My 
invitation was seriously meant, but was accepted in the fol- 
lowing fashion : 

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN ?" she said, in a tone of voice 
that suggested that I had asked her to jump over the moon. 
A rabbit has very little brain, but might easily have given a 
more courteous response to such a simple invitation. 

Although there were several people passing us, I pur- 
posely raised my voice and said : "When I ask you to come 
to tea I mean what I say ! I mean, do you wish to come to 
tea. And if you don't want to, or if your nature is too dis- 
agreeable to give a polite reply, then I certainly don't want 
to take tea with you !" 

Here she found a brilliant though perhaps somewhat un- 
grammatical reply, for she said : "You had better clear off !" 

I laughed and rejoined: "Don't be afraid. Madam! You 
are not so good-looking as to be able to dispense with ordi- 
nary politeness and yet remain attractive !" And so I left 
her, quite leisurely, and filled with grave reflections. She 
was certainly not at all so amenable to conversation as her 
sisters the Suffragettes of London, with whom, in the 
streets, I had often had such really interesting conversation ! 
And yet this girl was not disagreeable by nature, but had 
been taught by others to be disagreeable. 



November 24, 191 1. 

It must be perfectly clear to all those who come to the 
consideration of this matter with an open mind that the 
strict rule of preliminary introduction which obtains in Elng- 
land would not be necessary were civilisation further ad- 
vanced. 

In a perfectly enlightened community, social conversation 
— the natural preliminary to normal acquaintance — would 
be possible without any introduction whatever ; in many 
cases the mutual exchange of thought would speedily ter- 
minate owing to incompatibility of the two natures ; but 
frequently a valuable opportunity for lasting friendships 
(now completely lost) would be afforded; and nothing 
strikes me, when I make a flying trip to England, as more 
full of significance than this feature of the present Suffra- 
gette movement. 

Here, for the first time in England since centuries, a 
sound basis and reasonable excuse is afforded to men of 

>2J. 



honest intentions and ordinary intellect of conversing, at 
any rate for a brief moment, with those of the opposite sex, 
without being suspected of malevolent intentions. 

I can stop in the streets of London to buy a copy of 
"Votes for Women" and I can engage in a reasonable con- 
versation about questions of the day in France and Eng- 
land, without being met by that staggering exclamation : 
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" or, "You had better clear 
off!" 

I simply note this fact as a new phase which has its sig- 
nificance and which stands forth amidst one's impressions 
each time one makes a tiying trip to England. 

And I conclude by saying that here, for the first time, a 
lady, who stands selling newspapers in the street, can rea- 
sonably engage in conversation with one of the opposite sex 
without exposing herself to that terrible weight of suspicion, 
ridicule, and scorn which in England descends upon the 
heads of all those of opposite sexes who speak without in- 
troduction. 

I am not concerned here with all the devious arguments 
advanced for female suffrage. It seems to me perfectly 
common sense that those who pay taxes should vote, but I 
do not live much in England. I am simply laying stress 
upon a feature of the movement which I find a hopeful one, 
and which seems to open up the possibility of a vast social 
movement towards a better understanding between men and 
women. 



I remember so well one night, when I was in London en- 
gaged in the technical work of putting this book on the 
market, walking to and fro on the platform of one of the 
Underground stations, quite abstracted in thought, my mind 
ranging over a host of details that had to be settled, I 
dropped something from my portfolio without noticing it, 
when I heard a lady's voice twice call my attention to my 
loss and, looking up, I saw, standing with her husband, a 
beautiful English lady. They were returning from the 
theatre. 

I raised mv hat and turned to pick up the papers I had 
lost. 

I do not want to make too much of this refreshing inci- 
dent ; but hundreds of women in England would have been 
afraid to call my attention to what I had dropped, and I 
presumed that this must have been an aristocrat, who was 
so far removed above the reach of vulgar, prudish public 
opinion as to possess that courage and independence, com- 



bined with refinement and dignity, which permits a good 
woman to speak to a man without previous introduction. 



One of my most expensive and least agreeable flying trips 
to England was accomplished when, in April of the year 
1908 (some three years after I had been in Paris), I heard 
of the loss of a large tin box which I had left at No. 40, 
Guilford Street, Russell Square. 

The Lost Box at 40 ! What a horrible and abiding night- 
more ! I had not wished, when I left England, to take ex- 
cess luggage with me to Paris, so, at the last moment, I left 
this box with my landlady, Mrs. Ravetto, sending her five 
shillings from time to time to look after it. The box con- 
tained so many manuscripts (typewritten and others) which 
could never be replaced ; so much prose and poetry that 
could never be rewritten — because they were composed in 
the freshness of spring mornings, when hopes were yet high, 
years and years ago. 

There were files full of letters, signed by such names as 
Lord Avebury, Marie Corelli, Heineman — all who were in- 
terested in the humble efforts of a beginner. There were 
precious sketch-books and family photographs ; there was 
an old mahogany writing-desk, with slanting green cloth 
surface and secret drawers full of documents, and beautiful 
letters from my cousin, signed Mary. And this tin box, 
measuring some 2 ft. 5 in. long by i ft. 7 in. high, was sold 
by auction with a lot of crockery, in my absence, without 
my knowledge. 

When it was too late I came flying across the Channel to 
find that Mr. Ravetto, who had formerly kept this apartment 
house, was in prison. It took me about three hours and fif- 
teen shillings to find his wife, living under an assumed 
name, three streets distant. 

She could not tell me where the box was. 

She was an Italian, and my researches next led me into 
Soho, a foreign quarter of London, where, by dint of speak- 
ing French to some down-at-heel Italians, I was led to look 
for a certain man named Lot, a milkman with one eye, who 
had a shop in Great Ormond Street. When I told this to 
Gregory, he said : "Why ! Lot's wife was turned into a 
pillar of salt, wasn't she?" Sure, I replied, perhaps Lot will 
know something about it — since none of my friends in Lon- 
don had cared to keep track of it, or advise me of the down- 
fall of this corrupt house. 

"Why, certainly, I remember your tin box," said the owner 
of the milk-shop. "It was a big box with a dint on the top. 



It was kept in the kitchen of Mr. Ravetto's house. It was 
sold with a lot of crockery at the end of the auction sale. 
All Mr. Ravetto's furniture had been sold. I saw your tin 
box loaded upon a small one-horse van and driven avv^ay by 
the man who had bought it. Where did it go? How do I 
know ? London is large. There were twenty vans outside 
the door that day. Trucks, donkey-carts, even wheelbar- 
rows were used to cart the stuff away." 

(There was a disreputable woman full of mystery up to- 
wards the top of Red Lion Street who said that, before the 
house was raided, Mr. Ravetto had often offered to sell her 
my box for ten shillings, but she had refused the offer, 
knowing that it was not his property.) 

I rushed from Lot's milk-shop to the auctioneer's in South- 
ampton Row. This item of the sale was not catalogued. 
They denied all knowledge of it. But I traced one of their 
workmen who had been present on the day of the sale. 
"Ah," he said, "it sometimes happens that at the conclusion 
of an auction sale a few odd lots are put up together and 
sold unofficially after the auctioneer-in-chief has gone. 
Doubtless it was thus with your tin box." 

I learnt that this auction sale had taken place on Alarch 4, 
1908. 

Ivliss Judith (calling herself Udita) of the Italian Hos- 
pital, Great Ormond Street, who had formerly been a do- 
mestic servant in the house in Guilford Street, told me of a 
great burning of papers which had taken place on March 4. 
Undisturbed by this ominous news, I continued my search, 
and, penetrating one day into the basement of 40 with Wil- 
liams, one of the auctioneer's workmen, whose address I had 
found in the Hampstead Road, there was pointed out to me 
a large sack, which contained a certain quantity of my pa- 
pers. It was then evident to me that my tin box had been 
emptied out and that these manuscripts, considered useless, 
had been bundled into a sack, while the rest of the contents 
of the box, the writing-desk, the history of the French Rev- 
olution in five volumes, etc., had been loaded on the van and 
gone away to Heaven knows where. 

I shall never forget rushing backw^ards and forwards 
across the Channel after this box. I have never found it to 
this day. I was very hard up at the time and the cost of 
these trips was most burdensome. Yet each time I had 
saved up enough money to make another journey I would 
come across to that accursed London and follow up fresh 
trails. At last I gave up the search. A phlegmatic Scot- 
land Yard detective, who had been deputed to help me, soon 

227 



fell out of the race and found nothing for me. I discov- 
ered the sack in the basement without his help. 

I suppose all the other missing articles are now knocknig 
about in some second-hand shop ; and if this falls beneath 
the eye of their present owner he can get five pounds cash 
by returning them to me, to my London address : E. B. 
Parsons, c/o Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, 62, Chancery 
Lane. 



January 30, 1912. 
After this sad experience of the lost box at 40, I became 
accustomed to visit England more frequently, and one day, 
when I had finished work with Mr. Herbert Ward, I packed 
my bag, raced from Rue Monsieur le Prince to the Gare du 
Nord in fifteen minutes (the chauffeur of the auto-taxi 
seemed to be executing a perfect Marathon) and the follow- 
ing afternoon at three p.m. I was standing on the quiet little 
pier at Lymington, Hampshire, waiting for the steamboat 
which was to carry me across to my home in the Isle of 
Wight. 

It was about five years since I had been home. 

I shall never forget this beautiful spring day ; the Solent 
lying stretched like webs of shining silk before us and far off 
from the mainland the faint, sunstreaked outlines of that 
Garden of England. 

The steamboat started. We threaded our way along the 
narrow lane of waters, between high wooden stakes which 
marked the varying depths, and buoys which swung when 
the seagulls lighted upon them. I was struck by the ab- 
sence of all sounds, save the beautiful harmonies of Nature's 
music. 

I had torn myself away from Paris in one of those abrupt 
moods when the thoughts fly uncontrollably towards home, 
towards the seagulls, the splash of the waves, the gorse hills, 
the waving of reeds swayed by the tide, the deep-mouthed 
baying of the guns in the sea forts. 

As the little steamer moved on almost noiselessly across 
the Solent, the breeze freshened, and far away one decried, 
through veils of mist that danced in the sunlight, the cross 
that stands on the summit of High Down as a monument to 
the genius of Tennyson. 

Are not the poems of that wonderful artist the nearest 
approach we have, in English, to the clarity of style and 
transparency of language that prevail in the best French 

22R 



literature? And yet the great Poet Laureate justly com- 
plained that no one had succeeded in translating his^ works 
into French with any degree of success ; so that tlTeir 
beauties are hidden from those of our neighbours across the 
Channel who read no language save their own. 

As I gazed upon this great cross of granite I reflected that 
I w^as coming home too late. For my father had died whilst 
I was far away in Berlin, and so many thoughts came crow^d- 
ing over me, but softened, modified, and set to music by the 
ripple of all this wide expanse of waters glittering beneath 
the spring sunshine. 

The delicious little cottage where my mother lived w^as 
like a perfect haven of rest. There was a little copse just 
across the road where nightingales sang in the hours of 
darkness. It seemed so strange to me that Miss Peyter was 
not there to hear them. But I had long w^alks over the 
downs and saw much that was new — the flowers, the dew, 
the gorse, the vast panorama of the seas to the south of the 
island. And then one afternoon, passing through a little 
wicket gate and across a field, 1 came to the gates of Lord 
Hallam Tennyson's beautiful park. I knew that if I sent 
in my card he would allow me to stroll about in these gar- 
dens ; and already I heard the wild cry of the birds which 
he brought from foreign parts and wdiich gave a note of 
tropical remoteness in the midst of this calm and gentle 
atmosphere of pastoral England. 



I made a little w-atercolour there — one of the most superb 
spots one could find in England, the view- across the garden 
with the sea beyond. Lord Hallam Tennyson came out and 
showed me another view from the drawing-room window 
which was incomparably beautiful. I then took a boat from 
Freshwater Bay and went round under the high cliffs, w^here 
a lot of timber had been washed up from a wTeck. 



I found it hard to tear myself away from this island. 
Although everything was very composed and orderly there, 
I heard a certain unconventional lark forgetting himself in 
the blue. The random ecstacy of his song was a revelation 
to me. He seemed to reel off wdiole stanzas of intoxicating 
praise. It was a delirium of gratefulness for some happi- 
ness concealed from us in the clover field beneath. 



Soon thi^ flying trip was at an end ; and then came Paris, 

?20 



rushing up in all the wildness of its license out of these 
scented hours among the gorse hills. 



Miss Gladys Holmes must have her place in any comment 
on "Flying Trips to England." She was a rare exception 
to the actress who drank up the whisky and sodas. 

Dear Gladys rode in a circus. She had an adorable figure. 
Snatches of the latest songs from all the London theatres 
and music-halls filled the house when she called to see me. 
We would paint and chat till the shadows lengthened in the 
beautiful gardens of the Great Ormond Street Hospital, 
over which my windows looked ; and we would watch the 
nurses in their white caps as they strolled out to read their 
letters by the fountain under the great trees. Nobody see- 
ing our boarding-house from the Guilford Street side would 
guess that the windows at the back could overlook such a 
charming garden. But Gladys knew. We met in the rain ; 
but it was often sunshine as we sat talking by this window, 
listening to the pigeons Avho loved to dwell upon their 
dreamy notes hidden in the trees of the hospital gardens. 



But Gladys is too much alive to lend herself to actual 
description in a prosaic book. If she remained longer on 
these pages she would begin to kick the binding of the book 
ofif. "Bow-wow !'' Let her go ! That was a good scamper. 



In later years, as business began to improve in Pans, I 
could tell you (had I space) how these flying trips to Eng- 
land led me further and further afield. I explored the peace- 
ful farm-lands of Warwickshire. I passed further nOrth, 
sped once through the wonderful Pass of Killiecrankie. 
When daylight dawned we had crossed the Grampians. We 
were speeding express between the heathery bights near 
Kingussie. Hurrah for the bonnie braes and burns of the 
Plighlands. Here is Inverness, with all its handsome maids 
and kilted laddies. And here we are, passing down the 
canal and out into the Loch. The steamer bears us away to 
Temple Pier — we are to know the charms of Drumnadrochit, 
the beauties of Glen Urquhart, to taste the fine, exhilarating, 
intoxicating air on the heights of Mount Melfourvenie ; to 
make friends amongst the crofters ; to paint mountain, lake, 
and fiery sunset. 

Oh, of all flying trips to England, which can compare with 
this ? Stand here on the ruined battlements of Castle Urqu- 



hart, that miracle of ancient architecture, whose foot is 
planted in the fathomless lake. Chase the wild deer through 
the tangled forest ; fish the salmon in the streams ; watch 
the grouse disappear over the heather. 

It was not British but American wealth and American 
patronage that enabled me thus to see my own country. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



I have endeavoured to present the public with a work of 
art at the price of four and sixpence, and in doing so I have 
not invited the co-operation of any publisher. I have pre- 
ferred to make my appeal directly to the public and I await 
their verdict with equanimity. 

I am not anxious to emulate the efforts of some who have 
time and patience to send a book or play round the entire 
British publishing market, meeting with thirty, forty, and 
fifty refusals, only to find (when they at length succeed 
in discovering a pubilsher and, contrary to the verdict of 
those who had refused the book, the volume scores a sus- 
cess) that more than three-quarters of the profits resulting 
from its sale must go into the pockets of the publisher. 

Why is it that English publishers fight shy of any 
originality and character? The answer is clear. They wish 
to float large quantities of mediocre literary matter upon 
the market. It is impossible to find a constant and ample 
supply of meritorious and reliable w^ork. Neither does the 
publisher wish the public to learn of the existence of such ; 
for the people would immediately reject the mass of medi- 
ocre fiction with which at present the publishers feed them. 

The literary market (which in the eyes of a publisher 
is on about the same standing with a pig market) would 
then be spoiled and many a harmful and unnecessary pub- 
lisher would have to retire from business. 

Let young and struggling authors take my remarks 
to heart. They may thereby be enabled to shape their 
course accordingly. 

Our publishing system tends inevitably towards the cor- 
ruption of literature and the encouragement of mediocrity. 

Chatterton saw this, as he lay dying, the light of his 
genius extinguishing by a coalition of forces against which 
it was almost impossible to stand. 

E. Bryham Parsons, 
63, Rue Monsieur le Prince, 

Paris. 



231 



APPENDIX. 



"Frustra laboret qui omnibus placere studit." 

Some who have glanced over my proofs speak as follows : 

Troner said : "To h — 11 with your proofs ! — you promised 
to dine in the Holborn Restaurant. !" 

Mayo said : "It is your book. You alone can decide what 
must be cut out." 

Sadler complains that ''that stuff about the Treatment of 
Horses in Paris is not sufficiently spicy for a Paris book." 

I was not aware that I ever sat down to write a "spicy" 
book on Paris. 

Sadler also says that my mission in life is to amuse 
people; that I am so terribly dull when I am serious. And 
that, in short, I ought to dance continually like a toy 
marionette before the public. He says, ''You don't for 
one moment suppose that I think you really care a rap for 
the horses of Paris, do you? I want something spicy when 
I go home from my office at night and you give me that 
stodgy chapter on Cruelty to Animals !" 

Sadler said that I had only one thing to fear — 'that the 
book would be ignored. But simultaneously he told me that 
if I used certain names I might get into trouble. So that 
it seems there are two things to fear — that the book may 
be ignored and that it may be noticed. 

Oswy said that "The Real Paris" (page 138) was a dis- 
graceful thing. 

I reply that when I went to Paris I did not go expecting 
to find evil and I found abundance of good. Yoii all in 
England look to Paris expecting to find evil, and here you 
thought to find it, and it does not exist, except in the mind 
of the English people, who fall into this trap. For the 
French Prefect of Police would rock in his chair with 
laughter (if he read this passage) to think that anybody 
could believe such a story about the Bois de Bologne. 

If the delicate sarcasm contained in this passage, "The 
Real Paris," is overlooked, and it is taken seriously, that 
is not my fault. I wrote the lines to appease the malignant 
curiosity of one who was clamoring for information of this 
description and would not have been satisfied by any of 
less ludicrous order. Those who have carefully read my 
book can judge for themselves whether that is the real 

232 



Paris. So full of tender, touching, unconventional romance^ 
of dainty, winsome gracefulness is the very breath of the 
real Paris, that I hesitate to draw the veil from off its face, 
and confront it, in all its transparent beauty, with a stony 
British stare. 

What right have I to open the door of the studio when, 
the model is posing? 

Perhaps, wnth her hand uplifted, and every intellectual 
sense on the alert, she is delicately fencing with a student,, 
who chaffs her on some trait in her character, gracefully 
beating down one by one his arguments. Close the door- 
of the atelier. "Le public n'entre pas ici." 



Oswy has also a couple of columns of criticism to write- 
on the Bal de Ouat'z Arts. "Your life has led you amongst, 
people who are not really gentlemen or refined." 

As Mr. Justice Vaughan Williams used to say, 'P make 
no comment." 

I am describing something that I saw. 

I may mention, however, that no moral crusade waged by 
England or America would have the slightest effect in^ 
stopping the annual Bal de Quat'z Arts. 

They are a people within their own gates. 

The country has its own distinct individuality indelibly 
imprinted on it. It never has been or will be like America 
or England. 



November 2, 191 1. 

I saw Bernard Shaw at 4 p. m. this Thursday. He is a 
big, loose-cut man, with easy-fitting clothes — quite an artist. 
to speak to. 

His room was nicely lit, a lamp hanging over the large 
table. A picture of a gondola going over a speckled, moon- 
lit sea. Good painting. At the prow of the gondola I 
think it was a black man, urging the beautiful craft forward.. 

Bernard Shaw said : "The French are more prudish than 
the English. I have a Frenchman going to take the part, 
of a French character in my play, and I make him say in 
this plav that for prudishness the French bourgeoise take 
the cake. Not only that — but this French actor says I am 
right in thus judging the French. Over here they don't 
care a bit about 'family life,' but it's all the world to the 
French. You tell me the students of the Ecole talk about: 
the beourgeoise and mock them. Why, that just shows. 
that the bourgeoise are very prudish. 



*'If you put so-and-so in your book you'll have private 
societies which exist in England for the suppression of 
immorality throwing up their hands, if not their heels, in 
the air. And, weighing it up, you stand to lose more by 
putting that in than you stand to gain by it. What is it 
anyway? It looks like an Egyptian thing!" 

"Why," I said, "it's an entrance ticket to admit one 

model to the Bal de Ouat'z Arts." 

"Oh," he said, "if it's a document like that, that rather 
changes the case. Still, there will be people who will 
object to it." 

The conversation was resumed — over another topic. 
"Here," I said, "is a little piece of MS. called 'Flying Trips 
to England.' You know, Mr. Shaw, when one has been 
away from England five years one comes back and sees 
things entirely different. Many of them strike one as very 
funny." 

"Sit down in a chair, Mr. Parsons," he said, as soon 
as he saw the title, "Ye Hypocrites !" "and let me read this 
through. I'll never have time to take this up again." 

"Well," he said, after reading it, "that's all right — of 
course, you know the French are more prudish than the 
English." 

"You say they are more prudish in France," I objected, 
"but there you can live with a mistress, and it is considered 
a privilege to have one. Here in England you would be 
obliged to hide her." 

"The students, at any rate," I said to him, "are free and 
easy — full of fun." 

"Ah," he said, "the artists, that's a little coterie — they're 
not the bourgeoise." 

I went away well satisfied. There was a little wicket- 
gate on the stairs, that reminded you of something in Pil- 
grim's Progress. 

Mr. Jerome K. Jerome writes to me from Monk's Corner, 
Marlow Common, under date July 5, 191 1, as follows: 

"My own advice would be to any man : 'never publish 
a book at your own expense.' If no publisher will take 
it up it would be almost evidence that the book stands very 
little chance with the public. Especially such a book as 
yours, for which there is a limited public. Have you tried 
Heinemann and Lane?" 

Miss Marie Corelli writes me, under date of August 19, 
1900, from Stratford-on-Avon, as follows : 

"My friend, there is only one means of success — work 

234 



and patience. Finish one book thoroughly, as well as 
artistically, as you can, and then submit it to an honest 
and trustworthy firm. Do not offer any synopsis of your 
work, or any explanation. Do not consent to any expenses 
of publication. Start your work on its own merits. If 
merit their is it will be acknowledged. Be brave and hope- 
ful — and calm and temperate. Success only comes through 
the hardest work and, what is still harder, the most in- 
vincible endurance and patience. May all luck attend you." 
(Signed) Marie Corelli. 

"I have been ill — not 'too busy' — or I would have written 
you before." 

(It is with mixed feelings that I read this letter, after the 
lapse of eleven years. — E. B. P.) 

With regard to my "postscript," I notice that the "By- 
stander" had recently to admit that : "The reading world 
is sickened, nauseated with flippancy. . . . Reading a 
batch of novels of the moment resembles a walk past the 
distorting mirrors in the Luna Park, Paris. In one we 
see ourselves long and lean, in another short and fat, in 
another broad-beamed, and in another swollen-headed. 
Life to-day needs more real, less unreal reflection." 

This carries out the very point which I urge in my post- 
script. Young girls and men of twenty and thereabouts, 
to whom all that appears in print is sacred and bears the 
hallmarks of irrefutable dignity, apply themselves with the 
whole force of their youthful ingenuity to the study of 
trash like "Sunday Chatter," and "Fireside Stories." They 
think because it is in print that it is faultless. And on 
that model they base their own endeavors to write "litera- 
ture." They do not know that the model is a false one. 

A short time ago a young lady showed me a trifle in the 
shape of a story which, at any rate, bore the cachet of an 
independent, vivacious, and pleasant style. " "But," she 
said, "it has been refused everywhere so I must set to 
work and try and write better." It never occurred to 
her to reflect whether the market was utterly corrupt and 
her style of writing was correct. She preferred to con- 
demn herself, because "what the editor accepts is good and 
what he refuses is bad !" Yet, if publishers "know what 
the public want," how is it that the book market is admit- 
tedly flooded with rubbish? 



New York City, December, 191 1. 

Sturgiss and Walton (of 31 East 27th Street) said to 



me through their manager, when I saw them in New York 
this winter: 

''Your manuscript is so interesting, but — how shall I 
express it? — it seems too scattered" (he probably meant 
that it lacks continuity). "It would be such excellent mate- 
rial for an autobiographical novel — if you could cast it 
into novel shape." 

"Some chain ought to exist on which these stories should 
be strung, like pearls upon a silken thread," I rejoined, 
smilingly. 

"Well, that's a nice job for the mechanical novelist if 
he likes to try it. I will leave it to him, content to have 
stated the facts myself, and illustrated them to the best 
of my ability. If the public taste is so far zuarped that it 
cannot read anything unless it is in the shape of a novel 
(fact corrupted into fiction), then " 

And I left him standing there. 

Sadler complained that I should dream of using the 
water-colour of St. Malo. "The composition is bad," he 
said. "You can't get away from that. The high wall on 
the left of the picture," he insisted, "what's it doing there?" 

"Why," I replied in an apologetic tone of voice, "it's 
there, you know. You can walk all round St. Malo on the 
top of it. You wish me to remove this high wall because 
it's not good composition ; but if I did so the sea would 
come in and drown people." 

Well, the fact is, I never had time to study painting. All 
the people I have ever worked for regarded it as an idle 
amusement. Monsieur Merson once said to me, "I could 
teach you painting if you could come regularly to the school. 
But if you have to leave at eleven o'clock to go and work 
in your bank " 

Just the same as you would draw a Christmas card^ and 
take a colour-box and put a little red on the berries and 
give it to a friend as a souvenir of the festive season, say- 
ing, "Accept that as a private token of my friendship ; it 
is not for the public, for it would never interest them." 
Thus do I fix up my Paris book, and bind it, and give it 
away to a few friends, to show them what Paris is like. 



236 



(New York, 44 West 58th Street), 
January 18, 1912. 

I FORGOT TO MENTION 



So many things that I forgot to mention ! People of no 
consequence, whose hves are interesting, and who ought to 
be mentioned. 

There was the Concierge of Quai Malaquais — just next 
door to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. She used to keep my 
paint-box for me, and my unfinished canvases. If I left 
these canvases on the chevalet (easel) in the class-room 
(atelier) of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, they assumed weird 
and grotesque forms in my absence. I was but an amateur 
at oil painting, and some of the students found it droll to 
pousser plus loin mes etudes — there's no English for it. 
They liked to carry out my ideas a little bit further than I 
had done myself. They gave a wooden leg to my nude 
model, and put a sword in his hand. I objected, and carried 
the studies away to the Concierge next door, who kept them 
in her loge till the following morning, when I called for 
them, carried them back into the school, and continued them. 

I remember, when first I joined the school, I had a car- 
penter make a large wooden paint-box for me. I left it in 
the school one morning and the following day I couldn't 
find it anywhere. I suspected some "blague" — which means 
a joke. But all the students were as serious as anything 
that morning. No one wore a smile. The usual greeting 
that I, as an Englishman, received, in those early days of 
my apprenticeship — an imitation of the English accent, given 
by a chorus of thirty — which made me feel that I was enter- 
ing the Zoological Gardens — was wanting. That morning 
an air of grave mystery pervaded the atelier. 

Everyone was at work, and only the model smiled. 

"Mais, qu'est-ce que vous cherchez — nom d'une pipe !" 
cried someone. "I am searching for that wooden paint- 
box!" I exclaimed. 

At last I saw it, hanging by a cord right up in the air, 
close to the ceiling. 

After that I used to leave it with the Concierge next door. 
She was a tall, handsome, flourishing woman. I went into 
the courtyard, and used to call her name on the stairs. "Bon 
compte fait des bons amis," she used to say — or words to 
that effect, and she refused a tip of two francs for her kindly 
service. It seemed always springtime in that courtyard. A 

2X7 



bird sang in a cage; and she, the Concierge was young. 
And the shining river was flowing by the quai. 



Then there was the Nettoyage a Sec in the Rue d' Amster- 
dam. An elderly, white-haired English lady, who spoke in 
a soft voice and had lived in Paris for thirty years, managed 
this business. I used to take my white waistcoats there to 
get them washed. It was thus I made her acquaintance. 
It was pleasant to speak English sometimes. She had a 
French assistant in the shop, who "mocked herself not badly 
of the English people." "Je m'en moque pas mal, moi, de 
votre patois," elle m'a dit. What a charming street that was 
— the Rue d' Amsterdam ! I often hear Americans say there 
is nothing in Paris. It seemed to me full of music. 

Another English family : the Van Praaghs in the Rue de 
Rivoli. The aged mother — who said she hated France, and 
lived there in preference to any other country. Her young, 
truculent, brilliant son — sharp as a needle — speaking French 
with a perfect Parisian pronunciation. I should never have 
his accent if I lived for five hundred years. 

What have I said of Paltz and his wonderful studio on 
the heights of Montmarte (Rue des Envierges, take Metro 
for Station des Couronnet, direction Nation) ? Next to 
nothing. Yet how often I would visit him and gaze at the 
terrible cold glare of his picture of the dead woman on 
the bed. 

And Boissart, in his beautiful studio, hung with Virginia 
creeper, Rue de Bagneux ! What an heroic figure was his. 
It seemed as though his roots went deep into the fruitful 
soil of Paris. He was immovable — there he lives for years 
— tremendous — saturated with the traditions of Bohemian 
camaraderie. A strong friend, who made my three years 
in the art school the happiest years of my life. 

There was Bezich, who made such beautiful copies of 
pictures in the Louvre, Nobody knows what that man 
passed through in his studio, Place de la Sorbonne. Op- 
posite him lived another student of the Ecole des Beaux 
Arts, who combined business with art and made a good 
thing of it. I used to envy him his delightful menage. 
One heard peals of laughter when one knocked at the 
door. We can't go in there, my dear readers. We should 
be de trop. 

238 * ' ' 



Then, there was Couavoux ! (pronounced Coo-a-voo). 
I should wish to tell you of his remarkable Boulevard 
habits. How we would stroll for hours together from 
cafe to cafe. His amusement at my French sayings. He 
would take notes of them. If I chose the wrong words 
he said it was more expressive. He had been married 
to a fat woman and was separated. I met him in Establie's. 
When he saw any stout woman in a restaurant he would 
take out his carnet and begin to sketch her. He said, "She 
resembles my wife." 

He lived in the Rue du Croissant, where newspaper boys 
go to get their bundles of evening papers. There was a 
lugubrious cafe below and a lodging house upstairs. The 
darkness on the stairs was great. At last you arrived 
at his room, where there was a bed, and pictures all over 
the fioor. He did exquisite little Louis XV. sort of ladies 
in the daintiest costumes. He had wandered the boulevards 
for ten years searching for types — he had sketch-books 
filled to the brim with notes "d'une facture epatante.'' 
There were delicate impressions of children in the park, 
nurses, card parties, young ladies caught in every pose 
imaginable. It was like a piece of concentrated Paris fallen 
within the two covers of a book and crystallised there. 

Again and again he said to me: 'T shall have to leave 
this accursed city which doesn't feed its man!" — ("Je 
quitterai ce sacre Paris, qui ne nourrit pas son homme!") 
— "and go to America, to England." 

"Learn," I said, "learn English. You will double your 
opportunities. Such work as yours must fetch its price 
in America." 

At that moment a poor orange seller came into the shop 
and offered to sell oranges. He sold his wares in three 
languages, speaking French, English, and German to amuse 
us. "There!" said Couavoux, "there are the riches that 
your languages bring. If I learn English I shall have 
to sell oranges !" 

We were seated in a wine-house where, if you buy a litre 
of wine, they allow you to sit down at the far end of the 
establishment at some bare wooden tables in great darkness 
between rows of enormous barrels. There is scarcely any 
light except that artificially supplied by gas. Each man 
brings, in a piece of newspaper, the bread he has bought 
outside in the baker's, the piece of cold charcuterie, the 
scrap of brie or camembert. One dines thus for about 
sixty centimes. For years Couavoux took no other meal — 
dined in no other place. He dispenses entirely with lunch. 
If I wanted to find him I must go to the wine-shop in the 

2^ 



Rue PoisBonniere. II s'enfongait dans ses travaux d'artiste, 
ne mangeant que de la misere. Merde ! quelle vie. 

And yet I believe he found something picturesque in 
all this struggle. When he made fifty or eighty francs on 
a picture — a set of illustrations or a menu cover (one of 
which latter he once sold to the Cafe de la Paix) he was 
still to be found in the wine-shop dining for 12 sous, chat- 
ting with the poorest, those who were almost outcasts. 
Few of those who came there were artists. It was a resort 
for mien Vv^ho were reduced to the last economies. Some 
of them had known brighter fortunes, and one listened 
often, in that close, winey atmosphere, surrounded by the 
dim silhouettes of enormous wine barrels, to a fantastic 
medley of conversation. 

Here Couavoux would make many a sketch full of char- 
acter, even colouring some of them. Frequently the man 
he was sketching would at the conclusion of the pose come 
and look at it, smile, and go out to resume his life of 
beggary on the boulevards. 

There was no man more quick of comprehension, more 
ready for a joke than Couavoux. He seemed to move in a 
Paris all of his own, of which many Parisians knew 
nothing. 

When he changes his address he never leaves any notice 
of his new lodging. Yet, after months of separation, 
during which I have been absent in New York, we always 
meet again on the boulevards by mere chance, and plunge 
into those long, agreeable, if often almost angry discussions, 
where his views are diametrically opposed to mine on many 
points, and therefore interesting. 

Sometimes in our wanderings I would insist that we 
should go off the beaten track. And Couavoux and I 
would cross the Pont des Saints-Peres and, by way of the 
Avenue de I'Opera, arrive at the Boulevard des Capucines 
and turn into the Grand Cafe, because the music was good 
there. Here, as soon as the waiter had served us, Couavoux 
would bring out his carnet of sketches, and, muttering : 

"Mais — quel type — regardez-moi ! Non, le gros qui se 
ballade avec la petite blonde" — away would race his pencil, 
and, indifferent to the curiosity of all who surrounded us, 
he would see that the fat man and his fair mistress found 
a permanent place in his phenomenal sketch-book. Some- 
times the waiters of the Grand Cafe were scandalized at 
such freedom. At other times they were amused. 

I frequently admired Couavoux's work. He had no 
immediate market for such sketches. They were not drawn 
on purpose to sell. Primarily, they were drawn because 

24Q 



the subjects were good — parceque ses doigts d'artiste fab- 
riquaient forcement ce qu'il trouvait interessant. 



February 3, 19 12. 

So far as has been possible I have corrected my proofs — 
in railway carriages, on the steamer in mid-Atlantic, and 
while travelling on the subways of New York. I do not 
pretend that I have presented this book in the form in 
which I should like to see it; and I shall not be able to 
revise the final proofs at all, as I have not time to do it. 
Moreover, much of the material that I want is in Paris. 

Certainly there is one most important omission. A new 
star has dawned upon the horizon of France since I began 
to write this book, viz., that of the scence of aviation. 
I have said nothing about it. This leap into the air has 
thrilled with a new inspiration the people of that most 
beautiful country. I shall never forget a certain early 
morning at Vincennes, when a mighty band of aviators 
started on their way round that gigantic racecourse called 
the "Circuit, Europeen." The following week I was in 
England and saw them start on their return journey across 
the Channel. Later on, Beaumont and Vedrines were again 
to be seen at Hendon, having tea amidst an admiring 
throng. They had returned from their race round Great 
Britain and had proved to the English that aviation could 
no longer be safely derided. It was a strange thing to see 
a French naval officer who, steering by the compass, had 
flown round our country in three days, leaving every 
English competitor far behind. 

The Sun in all his power and majesty 

Reigned in the noonday sky and all was still 

When first aspiring man, weary of Earth 

Filled with a strange new courage, clove through space 

On wings of his own making and" surveyed 

From heaven's heights the map of all the Land 

As only birds have seen it. Grovelling we, 

Poor powerless pedestrians, raised our eyes 

And, thrilled with a new hope, gazed into the blue, 

Hearing a faint, insistent thunder swell 

And grow in volume, till above our heads 

(Far swung along invisible tides of air 

Like some gigantic bee whose angry buzz 

Defies the threatening elements) that craft 

Slid down the trackless steepes, and the man-bird 

241 



Stood there unharmed, his steel-stayed wings scarce 

stained 
After a thousand miles of strenuous speed. 

The return of Beaumont, when he won the prize offered 
by Lord Northcliffe, was certainly epic. But the start of 
the European Circuit at Vincennes was surprising. The 
whole population of Paris seemed to have turned out, and 
to have covered the camping ground beyond the Castle at 
four in the morning! When the pick of the French com- 
petitors arrived in England the fields at Hendon were 
almost bare. The crowd that was present was composed 
for the greater part of Frenchmen. Indeed, the entire 
French colony seemed to have come out from London. 
*'Le Journal" was being cried noisily up and down the 
field, and previous to the arrival of the first airman, one 
heard nothing but French conversation around one. The 
fact was, the English did not believe the competitors would 
ever arrive there. They missed a glorious sight. 



I am reading a wonderful book of Zola, called ''L'Oeuvre ; 
the Work.'' An artist, for w^hom w^omen have no attrac- 
tions, except as models, goes home one night in Paris to 
his solitary studio. The rain lashes the streets of the 
Quarter, and in the porte-cochere (the arched doorway 
under which a carriage would go) is hidden a girl, whom 
he san hardly at first see in the dark. She tells him a 
story of having been delayed in a train which broke down 
and thus arriving at Paris too late to meet a person in 
whose house she was to fill a new place as governess. The 
young man laughs at this story, having heard others so 
similar. He at first refuses to allow her to come in and 
find shelter from the terrific storm which sweeps Paris. 
But finally he shuts her in his sudio. He will have nothing 
to do with her, beyond forcing her to take his bed. He 
sleeps on a bench, and in the morning, waking before she 
does, he looks round the screen to see if she is up. She, 
having been afraid to sleep for a long time, was at last 
w^rapt in slumber, and, feverish from the heat that follows 
the thunderstorm, has thrown off all the clothes. He seizes 
a palette, exclaiming, "The very pose I need ! At last, for 
mv great picture !'' While she sleeps he paints her head 
and shoulders, even makes a complete sketch of her, for a 
great canvas which he has long had on his easel, but for 
which he could find no model to suit him. She is very 
upset when she awakes. He is obliged to beg her to keep 

242 



still or else she will spoil the sketch. Gradually, as they 
talk, she tells him of her history. She then leaves him 
and he does not see her for many months. In vain he 
seeks a model to continue the pose he has begun. They 
are all useless. 

One day she returns while he is working, bringing him 
flowers. She hates the pictures he paints, whicii are 
masterly studies so far as drawing is concerned, but of the 
most extravagant style of painting. Meantime, the four 
young men, companions of youth, who were bred in the 
same country village ; Claude, the painter, with whom we 
have to do ; Sandoz, the literary aspirant ; Gagniere, who 
gives up painting for music ; the terrible Mahoudeau, 
sculptor ; Dubuche, the budding architect — continue their 
joyous meetings in the cafes ; talk till midnight over their 
frugal suppers, often joined by the great Bongrand, I\Iem- 
bre de ITnstitut, who has "arrived," is successful, covered 
with glory, a painter renowned throughout France, yet 
loving this Bohemian throng where such optimism is 
rampant. And Christine, the girl, continues her rare visits, 
escaping from the saintly old lady to whom she acts as 
companion. 

Unable to finish his picture for the Salon, she one day 
consents to undress, and he is thus enabled to refind the 
marvellous lines of the nude figure which he searches as 
the central part of his picture. The picture is a frightful 
failure at the Salon des Independants. Thousands of 
people fall back on chairs in laughter at it. Old men 
shake their canes threateningly in the air. Mothers demand 
that their young daughters be moved quickly out of the 
room where the picture is hung ; and in the midst of these 
shrieks of laughter and jests the four friends, leaders of 
a new school of painting, arrive. That night, on his return 
to his studio, the painter sinks sobbing to the ground, but 
Christine has been waiting for him in his studio, and she 
says, "Hush, I love you." After a night of exhilarating 
happiness, she flees the next day from her position as 
governess, they pack up the studio, and go to live in an old 
cottage in the country, so as to be entirely alone. But after 
two years of bliss, hidden away from his friends, the crav- 
ing comes upon him to return to Paris. He must resume 
his art. With fear she sees him once more begin to aban- 
don himself to this terrible mistress — Art. She knows she 
loses each day her hold upon him. At last he cares for 
her no more — except as a model. All day long for months 
she must pose for pictures which are refused in succession, 
ignominiously, by the Salon. All the four men are now 

143 



grown up. They still meet as before, every Thursday, at 
supper. But the fierce struggle for life has set most of 
them one against another. The art critic will no longer 
say anything in the newspaper which he now controls in 
favour of the painter or the sculptor. He explains that 
the public will not have anything of this new school. All 
the friends complain that Claude, now almost a maniac, 
has been their ruin. A night comes when Christine, the 
girl, now married to Claude, drags him at midnight from 
his easel, points to the hideous picture he is painting, 
declares that these women made of a little dust spread 
upon canvas have robbed her of her husband, and drags 
him off to a night of delirious abandon. She thinks she 
has triumphed. She even makes him spit upon his painting. 
But when she lies exhausted in the early dawn of the next 
day he escapes from her embrace, steals away from her 
side, and hangs himself opposite the vast and frightful 
picture he has painted. Exasperated at his failure to realise 
real life in his painting, he is buried in the great cemetery 
outside the fortifications of Paris.. Alone, Sandoz, the now 
celebrated author, at the height of his success, and Bon- 
grand, now descending slowing towards the age of nonen- 
tity, in the decline of his genius, stand in this cemetery, 
watching the burial. 

But the priest's voice, as he mutters the prayers for the 
dead, is constantly interrupted by the frightful clatter of 
a train which is shunting on the railway line beyond and 
above the cemetery. This train gives vent to ear-piercmg 
whistles. The buffers, clashing together, make a sound 
like a frightful salvo of artillery ; while in a distant part of 
the cemetery a vast column of smoke arising from the 
burning of thousands of cofiins which have decayed and 
been dug up and heaped together to make room for a new 
generation of dead, gradually spreads its ominous pall 
above their heads. 

This is a book by the man whose works are often called 
immoral — by those who have never read them. 



February 12, 1912. 

There comes a knock on my door. I knew we had left 
out somebody. Now it is Halet, who comes in to smoke 
a pipe and pass the time of day. 

Halet is an Oxford and Cambridge University man, who 
came to Paris to study in a "Tabac." I know Tabacs are 
not generally considered seminaries where academic in- 
struction may be had, and it is true that Halet wandered up 



14^ 



to lectures at the Sorbonne sometimes — for he was study- 
ing for his Licence es Lettres. But his principal occupation 
was — in the Tabac. For the benefit of the uninitiated 1 
may say that the Tabac was a little tobacco shop just 
opposite the Hotel de 1' Univers, w^here Halet and I lived 
in the Rue Monsieur le Prince. In this tobacco shop one 
could also buy stamps, postcards, and postal orders. Every 
tabac in Paris sells stamps and is for this reason sheltered 
under the wing of the Government. Yet strange, inter- 
esting, and unofficial happenings may take place in a tabac, 
as I shall hope to show. For a tabac supplies wine in 
unlimited quantities to those who can pay for it. And, as 
wine and women are popularly supposed to run together, 
this tabac also offered you, as you sipped your Mominette, 
agreeable facilities for the enjoyment of female society. 
Naturally the tabac of a certain street becomes one of 
the places of rendezvous in that street. But in this special 
tabac meals were also provided, and thus one could always 
find Halet eating his midday and evening meal "en famille" 
with the proprietor of the tabac, his wife, and their few 
boarders. It was here that Halet mastered, to their last 
detail, the utmost intricacies of French argot — without a 
profound knowledge of which no one can understand the 
current conversation of a group of swearing Frenchmen. 

Here sat Halet, who knew all that was worth knowing 
of Greek and Latin, was a Master of Arts, and a pastmaster 
as regards the bouquet of rare wines ; and here he learnt 
many things which they forget to teach you in the Uni- 
versity of the Sorbonne. 

It w^as Halet who first showed me what study meant. 
It was he who pointed out to me the folly of promiscuous, 
aimless reading. He read with a definite aim in view, 
according to a schedule of books intelligently compiled by 
the best French professors and English dons. It was in 
his rooms that I discovered for the first time the history 
of "French Literature" (Frs. 4.50 at Hachettes) and the 
"History of English Literature," by George Saintsbury, 
each of them a perfect well and fount of information. By 
the time one has read and digested the books indicated 
in the "History of French Literature" one is au courant 
with all the classics of France. 

Moreover, it was part of Halet's curriculum in the prepa- 
ration of the French degree which he was to take, to trans- 
late old French poetry (which didn't resemble modern 
French in the least) into Latin, and I believe even into 
Greek. Along such lines of study as these it may easily 
be imagined that my good friend Halet and myself tem- 

245 



porarily parted company, and while he, stretched in his 
great cane chair, unravelled the most intricate difficulties 
of these cross-translations, I read his Moliere (which he 
had bought at a wonderful bargain, in three tomes, all 
the plays being illustrated), or the life of Voltaire; and 
all the while he would illumine my French reading with 
the most witty and delightful commentaries. 

Halet and I met for the first time in the Tabac Opposite. 
We spoke French to each other, but we spieedily discovered 
that we were both Englishmen, and both sons of clergy. 
Soon after this he took up his residence in the Hotel de 
rUnivers, and our acquaintance ripened and mellowed, for 
there is nothing like a comradeship of reading to ensure 
peaceful and uninterrupted friendship. What I lacked in 
scholarship my friend possessed in abundance. He has 
known the luxury of two separate University educations, 
one at Cambridge and the other at Oxford. Although 
younger than myself, he had travelled abundantly and well. 
As one of the Cape Mounted Police he had scoured the 
whole of the Transvaal. Later on he accepted a tutorship 
in a college in Germany. And now he was enjoying three 
years of study in Paris. 

Oxford was his home. He knew every inch of the High. 
No shady nooks of the river were hid from him. He 
understood the secrets of punting and all that was dignified 
and droll in college life. Saturated with the traditions of 
the University, at home among the classics, he was yet 
the most Bohemian of Bohemians, and in Paris he not only 
set the pace to students who were natives of the city, but 
outran, in the ingenuity and invention of his quaint inven- 
tions, all the raciest traditions of the Latin Quarter. He 
reigned like a king in the tabac of Rue Monsieur le Prince, 
where he was known as "Le Maitre Henri." Paris was? 
to him what water is to a fish ; there he could swim fastef , 
laugh louder, learn quicker, and sleep less than anywhere 
else in the world. 

Halet took an interest in all my paintings, and many 
were the sketches I made of him. 

He was an intimate friend of the parrot who lived in 
the courtyard of the hotel, and he taught this bird to cry 
out quite clearly such legendary sayings as : 

"Not a word to the wife !" 

"That's put the tin hat on it!" 

"Chance your arm !" ■ 

It breaks my heart to remember how all this is bound up 
so intimately with the past — the days that perhaps won't 
return. 



Halet was also favourably known to a black cat. How 
often I myself have returned at about 5 a. m. and found 
that cat lying on the table that stood in the entrance-hall. 
Its unblinking eyes were fixed upon me as though to say : 
"Mum's the word. I'm not asking any questions." 

I remember some lovely summer mornings when Halet, 
who had just come home, opened his window and called 
across the court "Good-morning'' to me. His bowler hat 
was pushed back far on his head, and he would burst into a 
glorv of song : 



t>'^".> wx --wx^j. 



"I wonder what the girl I'm thinking of — 
Is thinking of me !" 

It is breakfast time, and Halet had just arrived. Well, 
these summer mornings abide in my memory. The parrot 
was crying out, "Francois ! Francois !" in the courtyard, 
and presently Halet would make his tea, and arm in arm 
we v;ould stroll into the Luxembourg Gardens. 

''O bliss, when all in circle drawn 
About him, heart and ear were fed 
To hear him as he lay and read 
The Tuscan poets on the lawn." 

These charming gardens, with the pigeons cooing, the 
waters falling from the Fontaine de Medicis, and the great 
trees aglow with green. Halet had a long, folding chair 
and a compact tea service, and these he would take out 
under the trees, and while he drank tea he would study 
*'The History of France from the Earliest Times to the 
Fall of the Second Empire in 1870," by W. R. Jervis, or 
"The Third French Republic," by Richard Lawton, or 
"Le Siege de Paris,'' by Francisque Sarcey. 

I would become enthusiastic about a course of study, and 
there under the trees, while the pigeons cooed their soft 
approval, he would tell me how, one day, when I had time, 
I must take my Baccalaureat. "That," he said, " is passed 
in two parts — 'Letters and Philosophy' or 'Science and 
Mathematics.' 'Letters and Philosophy' is the best. You 
buy the 'Programme du Baccalaureat." published by 
Delaliam, opposite the Sorbonne, for 50 centimes. After 
you have passed the letters you must go in one vear 
for the 'Philosophy.' You will have to read a certain 
number of French philosophic books, and Hume, Locke, 
or Adams Smith in English. Once you have passed your 
'Baccalaureat' it is all right. You inscribe yourself as 

247 



student in the Sorbonne, and go to one or two lectures.. 
The 'Baccalaureat' costs you Frs. 140 altogether. After 
that you have to go to the Sorbonne four times in the year,, 
and take four 'inscriptions,' beginning in November, be- 
tween the 1st and the 15th of that month; then between 
January i and 15, of March, and of May. Each inscription 
costs you Frs. 32.50. Included in this sum is a ten-franc 
a year subscription for use of the library. When you have-, 
taken your four 'inscriptions' you can go in for the Licence 
whenever you please." 

How I envied those who had the leisure and means thus. 
to follow up some serious course of study. 

Halet himself was always lucky. He would secure the- 
most luxurious travelling tutorships whenever he wanted 
them. He dressed well, but had a fatal habit of losing his^ 
belongings. His capabilities as a cook were great. De- 
spite all sorts of disadvantages he passed his examination 
in the Sorbonne. His thirst (for knowledge) was un- 
quenchable. Alas ! are those days, indeed, gone by whent 
he stood erect on the table of the Tabac in order (as he 
termed it) to "trinquer avec le bon Dieu." The glass aloft 
in his hand, he harangued in faultless French an admiring' 
crowd on the day his success at the Sorbonne was- 
announced, and shortly afterwards he left our street, to- 
return to his beautiful home in Oxford ; and when, months, 
afterwards, I visited him there, I found him so staid and 
quiet, so decorous and conventional that I could not help 
asking myself: "Is this the Halet I knew in Paris, the 
friend of parrots and of black cats, the popular hero of 
the Tabac Opposite, the legendary figure who made history 
in Rue Monsieur le Prince, and whom I shall always see, 
easily yet faultlessly attired, standing upon the table, his 
face illumined with an hospitable smile, calling out to alll 
and sundry, 'Alesdames, Messieurs, je leve mon verr$^-a lai 
sante de tout le monde'?" 

E. B. P. 



THE END. 



248 



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